


Panoply

by WhatOtherPlanet



Series: IMEBG AU [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: (I do tho), ...insofar as RWBY the show knows what that means anyway, Alarming revelations about how your friends have been doing while you were off being gay, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dating, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Faunus Summer Rose, Finally; the plot!!!, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Past Abuse/Manipulation (Adam), Mentions of alcoholism, More character tags as we get there, Multi, Multiplicity/Plurality, None of the OCs are dating canon characters, Or don't, Original Religion, Other, Polyamory, Sequel, Trans Character, go read IMEBG first, graphic violence in some chapters, light alcohol consumption, like all the tags are finally really happening, sexual content in some chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2020-10-11 20:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 73,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20552171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet
Summary: After an unbelievably good night, Team RWBY wake up to their first day as girlfriends.But even with that exciting turn of events, the world is bigger than four girls in love. Pyrrha Nikos struggles with a challenge she could never win. A new leader sets the White Fang ablaze once more. Classes continue. And on the other side of the world, the preparations for the Vytal Festival continue, heedless of the great shadow circling high above the churning ocean to the east.Remnant spins on. And though Team RWBY's bonds are strong, it will take more than strength of heart to face what's yet to come.





	1. Prologue: Somewhere Beyond the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to It Might Even Be Great! Highly recommend you read that first, and the two prequels before it if you like.

The man in white took a long drag off his cigar, and took in the woman sitting at the other end of the table.

He knew he should be shitting a brick right now. In any other circumstance, he probably would be. But honestly, with all the bullshit he'd had to put up with in the two years since dear, _ dear _Cinder screwed the pooch and forced him to make a blind run for Mistral? This felt cathartic.

Once more, Roman Torchwick was playing for the winning team.

So he grinned, as he finally spoke. "I'm a little surprised y'know. Sure, I sent the invitation, but I really didn't expect someone of your… _ position _ to take the time to chat with some two-bit thug from Vale in some… _ dive _ of an inn in southern Anima. I'm _ honored." _

"Fuck you," she said, easily. There was no emotion in it. No humor, no anger. _ Exasperation, _if anything. "You said you wanted to deal, so quit your pathetic attempts at wit and get to the point."

With a wide grin, he pulled his briefcase from beneath the table. "It's simple, really," he said, and clicked the buckles open.

An oh, he _ did _enjoy the way the woman's eyes blew wide, as the thing inside uncoiled. Flicked its tongue out through its teeth. Hissed gently as he ran his gloved hand over its head, brushing its scaly mask with affection that was one hundred percent fake.

"I'm here on _ Her _behalf," he said.

"I can see that," the woman said, a startling lack of surprise in her voice. Her hand drifted towards her sword, a gesture which would have been imperceptible to someone even a little less familiar with sleight of hand. "But what does She want with _ me?" _

_ There. _ For once, a real emotion. The faintest flicker of desperation. Of _ fear. _

Roman could work with that.

"Quite simple really," he said, and shut the case again. The point had been made, after all; no sense in letting the wait staff know he had a tame Grimm on his person. "You're going to help us with… a little job. Just one little thing, and then we'll leave you alone and you can go back to pillaging and plundering, or whatever it is you rural bandit types get off to."

"The _ point, _" she growled. Her hand went to her sword. Deliberately obvious this time.

He clicked his tongue. _ No sense of the art, this one. _

"It's simple," he repeated. "You're going to help us with one, little, itty-bitty tiny thing, Raven."

He paused again, just to see the irritation in her face, and then—

"You're going to help us destroy the Kingdom of Mistral."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyy I'm BAAAAAACK
> 
> Welcome welcome welcome to round 2 are you ready I'm ready hoo ahh
> 
> Special thanks to FriendofYggdrasil for the beta!


	2. New Warmth

There were no alarms. It was Sunday, and it'd been a long night after all.

Yang wasn't sure if she was the first awake or not. It was a fair bet, though. She generally was an early riser; even on her days off she liked to get out, go for a run or hit the gym.

But today she lay in bed, a finger of sunlight nuzzling her cheek, staring sightlessly at the white plaster of the ceiling as she turned the still-raw memories over and over in her head.

_ It wasn't a dream, right? _

She sat up slowly, peering across the room, and received no answer. The bunk directly across from hers held a familiar ball of sheets and wayward limbs, emanating faint, high-pitched snores at regular intervals which drew a smile from Yang's sleepy heart. _ Ruby's off in slumberland, all's right with the world. _

And looking below, a perfectly dissimilar scene: A relaxed face framed by white hair, an island in an ocean of blue silk which was otherwise smooth and unwrinkled. It'd always seemed bizarre to Yang how Weiss could apparently lie back onto her pillow and sleep in perfect stillness, but now the image drew different thoughts to mind. Weiss looked like a princess out of a faerie-tale, a sleeping beauty to be woken with a kiss.

Yang smiled, letting a little unfamiliar affection bleed into her expression, remembering the events of the night before, the motions of clever hands and lips. _ I guess I _ ** _could_ ** _ go wake sleeping beauty right now. She'd probably yell at me though. _

She craned her neck over the edge of the bed, peering down at the final member of her little family away from home. Yellow eyes stared back up at her.

Yang grinned. _ "Hey!" _ she whispered. _ "G'morning." _

Blake freed a hand from her sheets to give a little wave.

_ "You getting up?" _

Blake's ears flattened, and she tugged her covers up to cover her nose. She shook her head.

Yang stifled a snicker. _ Awwwww… I love a sleepy Blakey. _

Still… just because Blake wasn't _ getting up _ didn't mean Yang couldn't have her own fun.

She hefted herself off her bed and landed in a crouch that was very nearly silent. Blake regarded her with baleful eyes, the rest of her face still masked by the covers. Yang just gestured towards the bed with a cheeky grin. _ "Mind if I join you?" _

Blake managed to perfectly convey _ 'I'm too tired for this shit' _with nothing more than the arch of her eyebrows. Still, she slowly dragged herself up towards sitting, and patted the side closer to the wall.

Yang slipped quickly in beside her, snuggling down beneath the sheets. They settled into the usual position, with Yang as the big spoon, cradling Blake in her arms, pressing her forehead into Blake's hair and breathing in the faint scent of lavender and something earthy and sweet she'd never quite been able to name. She felt Blake's hand trail back, squeezing hers tight.

_ "Yesterday really happened, right?" _Blake asked, so soft that it hardly seemed real.

Yang smiled, planting a kiss between Blake's ears, right where she loved it. _ "If you remember it too, then _ ** _probab_****_ly__ ?__"_** She looked across the room, following the lines of Weiss's chin, the so-delicate silhouette of her small body beneath the sheets. _ "Man, she's pretty. It's nice to be able to acknowledge that, huh?" _

A deep sigh. _ "Yeah." _

_ "You were bottling this up for a long time, huh?" _Yang scratched lightly at one of Blake's feline ears, then dragged her finger down through tangled black to circle around a hominid one, enjoying the way Blake shuddered at each touch. 

_ "...Yeah." _

Yang shifted and hugged Blake close, pressing gentle kisses into her hair, down to the back of her neck. Gentle, teasing, comforting things, and Blake leaned into them, a low vibration growing in her chest as she huddled back into Yang's core, spine to belly. 

It was a nice way to spend a morning.

Then something caught Yang's eye. The pile of limbs on her sister's bed had been shifting for a while, but now the limbs retracted, reordering themselves. A wreath of sleep-spiked hair bobbed up over the edge, and a silver glare bored into the cuddling girls.

_ "Uh oh, we're caught," _Blake said. She didn't sound very apologetic.

Yang grinned, waving at her sister with the hand that wasn't pinned under Blake. Ruby waved halfheartedly back, and proceeded to _ pout _adorably at them.

_ "I think she wants cuddles too," _Blake said.

Yang rolled her eyes, scooching back towards the wall. _ "Well, let's give her room." _Blake's ears perked up. She did as requested.

Seeing this, Ruby let out a little "eee!" sound and zoomed out of her bed at full semblance, landing with relative grace and leaving a trail of rose petals to fall across the room. The instant she ceased being composed entirely of abstracted flowers, she dove under the covers without a second thought, snuggling up to Blake with a happy little giggle, burying her face in the crook of Blake's neck. _ "Thank you," _she murmured.

Blake chuckled, planting a kiss on Ruby's forehead, but Yang's attention lay elsewhere.

She watched as a single rose petal, drifting astray on an errant current, swayed and swum down through the air until it came in for a perfect ten-point landing right on the tip of the sleeping princess's nose.

Blue eyes opened, and crossed to regard it.

There was a beat, as the rustle of Ruby wiggling deeper into the cuddle pile drifted through the still air. She found herself a perfect spot as the littlest spoon, and looked up just as Weiss turned her imperious gaze upon them all.

Ruby gulped, suddenly stiff as a spooked deer. "H-hey!" she squeaked. "G'morning Weiss!"

Weiss pushed herself up on one arm, plucking the rose petal between two fingers to examine it in the morning light. She then turned and regarded the pile of girls with a calm expression, tilting her head up slightly and squinting.

"Uh," Ruby said, wiggling to extract herself, but Weiss held up a hand.

"Please, allow me a moment to savor this image," she said. "My girlfriend, in bed with two other women less than two days after confessing to me." Her lips quirked, her eyes narrow and playful. "Whatever _ will _the papers say?"

Yang just rolled her eyes as her sister buried her face in shame. "You too Ice Queen," she said, beckoning with her free hand.

Weiss rose, her sheets flowing off her like water, down off that pretty little nightgown of hers. Badly feigning confidence, she strode across the room.

* * *

It was a very tight fit, awkward in the extreme. They wriggled about, shifting and trying to make it work. Eventually, they settled on a configuration—Ruby tucked in between Weiss and Blake, with Yang as the big spoon for all of them, pressing up against Weiss's back and using her height to curl all the way around to Blake again. It wasn't elegant, but it was warm, and soft, and if it wasn't the most comfortable arrangement, nobody was complaining.

Ruby breathed out a gentle sigh, pressing her face into Blake's chest as Weiss hugged her close behind. "This is the _ best. _Ten out of ten, Team RWBY wins."

"Being buried in girlfriends _ is _ a nice way to spend a Sunday," Weiss agreed, nuzzling into the back of Ruby's head. "That… _ is _what we are now, right? Girlfriends?"

Yang shrugged, pressing a kiss to Weiss's forehead. "Pretty much, yeah. We're going to have to tell people _ something _ anyway; if last night is any indication I'm not sure _ subtle _will work for us."

"It's… not like we _ need _to tell anyone," Blake said. "Team CFVY doesn't, and they seem to be doing fine."

Ruby let out a little whine. "No secrets, though!" She looked up at Blake, her eyes big and shining. "I don't want to hide how much I love you," she said, then tilted her head to look at Weiss. "Or you! It's fine with me if we don't _ tell _ everyone, but… unless you're really uncomfortable with it I want to be able to be affectionate with you two, and not just in this room or when we're alone. I'm not ashamed of how I feel for you, of any of this." She faltered. "But, if you guys really don't want to, I guess—"

Blake cut that off with a hand on Ruby's cheek and then with a kiss, smooth and slow. Ruby made a sound that was halfway happy and halfway something else Yang wasn't really prepared to quantify.

When they broke, Blake stared into Ruby's eyes with utter seriousness. "I'm not ashamed," she said. "And I won't be. Ever."

"Same for me as well," Weiss murmured, squeezing Ruby tighter even as she looked to Yang for support. "We promised as much last night, remember?"

"That we did," Yang smiled, shifting a little so she could kiss Weiss, a little less long and deep than the one before, but just as true. "And, yeah, same for me." She sighed, relaxing into the warmth at her chest, outside and in. "We should _ prooobably _tell team JNPR though, right?"

"We tell _ Nora _ and the whole school will know by sundown," Weiss grumbled. "Still, it _ would _ save us from having to tell people ourselves."

"Efficiency!" Ruby cheered, plunging her face directly into Blake's chest in celebration.

Blake rolled her eyes, scratching Ruby's head absently. There was a pause, drawn out, as breathing slowed and they all shifted a little closer to one another.

Weiss hummed, reaching up to run her fingers through Blake's hair. She hesitated, fingers tensed as she neared Blake's feline ears, and after a moment Blake's fingers delicately closed around her wrist and guided her forward. The touch drew a little shudder out of Blake, as she showed Weiss what she'd once showed Yang, the right motions, where to be gentle, where to scratch deep. Before long, she let Weiss's hand go, and settled deeper into her embrace with Ruby, clutching her tight as a slow rumble built in her chest.

Yang grinned so hard it hurt, watching them all, before she felt something shift. Weiss freed her other hand, letting it trail back across the sheets and settle on absentmindedly on Yang's inner thigh, heedless of the rush of heat the little action caused. Or, not so heedless, as she turned her head to give Yang a wordless smirk before settling back in like it was nothing.

Yang sucked in a breath. _ Ooooooh she's gonna kill me _ ** _so _ ** _ dead. _

Blake glanced up to regard both of them with knowing aloofness, tinged just-perceptibly with enough affection to cover the world. "Is there even a reason to get up?" she said. "We actually _ could _spend all day like this."

_ "Food…" _ Ruby murmeled weakly into Blake's boobs. With a regretful sigh, she retreated from that little slice of heaven, forcing Weiss to quit her ministrations as well. "Plus… Jaune wanted to meet with us today, remember?"

A sober chill settled over them. With everything else that'd happened yesterday, the events of the previous morning had slipped their minds.

Blake let out an illegible little grumble, reaching out to drag Yang's hand from Weiss's shoulder to her own hip. "Five more minutes."

Yang snickered, stretching forward to kiss her. "Nerd," she pronounced.

"No no," Blake said seriously. "I'm a _ scoundrel _now, remember?"

"Dolt!" Ruby mumbled happily, pointing to herself, then "Lout!" at Yang.

Weiss shrunk into Yang's embrace with. "You are all the worst and I hate that I love you."

"But you _ do _love us," Yang said, grinning as she squeezed the pretty little princess tight. "And we love you, Icy Weissy."

Weiss turned on her shoulder, giving Yang a look that stank of death and famine. "Call me that again, and I will destroy you in ways you only _ mostly _enjoy."

"That so?" Yang grinned, leaning in to give Weiss a big, slow kiss. Weiss seemed to agree with this, if the way she grabbed the back of Yang's head to keep her there was any indication. Yang was ready for it to break whenever… and then she felt teeth on her lower lip and the whole arrangement seemed _ very _warm all of a sudden.

"Mhmm," Ruby muttered, looking up at them with a knowing smirk. "Spicy Weissy." Blake let out an abrupt snort of laughter.

Weiss finally let Yang go, staring into her blown eyes with the smirk of an artist satisfied with her work. Then she turned, just in time for Blake to catch her, pulling her into a kiss that was just as deep. Pressed between their bodies, Ruby giggled, looking on with shining eyes.

Blake parted, leaving her finger pressed up against Weiss's chin, tilting her head to expose her flushed neck. This seemed to please Blake, as she flicked her attention to Ruby with a clever grin.

Ruby moved like lightning, darting in and planting a series of quick kisses up Weiss's neck, slowing only as her lips traced the shell of Weiss's ear.

"I love you," she whispered, and caught the lobe in her teeth.

And oh, the shudder _ that _produced.

Yang hummed, pressing against Weiss from behind, grinning like an idiot at the way the girl melted into her, the trembling weight of raw happiness in her arms. "You _ said _five more minutes, but… maybe fifteen. Fifteen minutes. Sound good?"

Nobody disagreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to FriendofYggdrasil for the beta!
> 
> And special thanks to Sgt. Chrysalis also for the other beta! Small edits have been made to the posted doc.


	3. Out From Shadows

Eventually, hunger won out over cuddles, and Team RWBY untangled themselves to get dressed for the day. It was a slightly awkward affair however, as the four found themselves struck by a peculiar problem:

When you (abruptly) start dating all non-related members of your team, is it still permissible to change clothing in their presence?

It wasn't like anything had changed _ materially, _(and it wasn't like Weiss hadn't snuck a guilty glance at various asses from time to time), but still…

They handled it different ways. Yang was the first to disrobe, shrugging off her tank top without even _ thinking _ about it, to Ruby's apoplexy and Weiss's utter flusterment. She apparently thought this was _ hilarious, _and chose to make a show of things, shooting plenty of winks at Weiss over her shoulder as she "sexily" slid down her shorts. Weiss voiced protest through all of this, while Blake merely glanced up from her book to give an appreciative nod. Ruby just buried her face in her pillow and refused to function until Yang was dressed again and she could safely slink off to the bathroom. Weiss was briefly worried that Ruby was actually upset, but then Ruby turned and stuck her tongue out at Yang, before shutting the door in their faces. The way Yang started laughing at that was probably a good sign.

Blake remained on her bed, flipping through her book as all this occurred. Weiss wasn't sure why, but Blake always waited for the others to change first, before slipping off to the bathroom or some other isolated place to do so herself. It seemed today would be no different.

Which left Weiss in an interesting position.

Yang sighed, flopping back onto her bed, wearing short shorts and a tank top that were basically just a rehash of her pajamas anyway. "I actually _ won't _look, if that'd make you feel weird," she said.

Blake nodded, flipping a page. "Same."

Weiss regarded them with a raised brow, half-touched by the show of respect, half-convinced there was mischief afoot. She turned to the dresser, selecting a nice, casual sundress. It was one of the simpler things she owned, bought on her very first trip to a thrift store, the semester after her disinheritance.

She glanced back over her shoulder, saw that the others really were sticking to their promise to respect her modesty, and felt a pang of… disappointment? They were girlfriends now; even if the issue of sexual activity was still in an unresolved place, it was _ fine _ for them to sneak a glance now and then. And besides, Yang had already given _ her _a lovely little show. Returning the favor was only proper.

She didn't want to have to _ say _it, though.

"Hmmm…" she murmured. "You know…"

She waited until she heard the sound of Yang turning over on the bed before she dropped her nightgown.

There was a sound like choking, and then the sound of a book abruptly snapping shut. Weiss smiled, as she changed into her underwear, then into her dress. She took no more time than necessary, but made no particular effort to speed things along, either.

She turned when things were finished, her smile only growing bigger at the blown-up look in Blake's eyes, at Yang's cheeky grin. 

The latter threw out a thumbs-up. "I just want you to know," she said, "that I'm not going to make any _ corporate assets _ jokes, but you better believe I'll be _ insufferable _once you get the company back."

"Gross!" Ruby yelled from the bathroom. "You're all gross and terrible!"

"You're just mad you missed Weiss's butt!" Yang yelled back.

There was a pause, before the bathroom door opened a crack, revealing a mournful silver eye.

"I'm just mad I missed Weiss's butt…" Ruby mumbled.

Weiss offered a warm smile and canted her hips. "We _ can _fix that, you know."

Ruby's eye got wider, and the door shut again. "Thanksmaybelater!"

Blake chuckled, observing all of the above with a warm smile on her face. "I love you guys."

"Awww…" Yang rolled over, flopping her head into Blake's lap. "Blakey-wakey's a sweetie-wheatie today."

Blake rolled her eyes, ruffling Yang's hair with unconcealed adoration. Something seemed off, though. Her cheeks were flushed, and stayed that way as she set down her book and stared off into nothing for a moment.

Weiss frowned, drawing close and sitting on the bed beside them. "Is everything alright?" she asked. "I apologize if that was too much, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

Blake laughed. "Oh, no, _ that _was fine." She took a steadying breath. "When Ruby gets done… there's something I should tell you two. Yang knows already."

Yang's eyes widened, and she half-lifted herself out of Blake's lap. "Hey, babe, you don't have to—"

"I'm _ dating _ them," Blake said, firm, but not harsh. "I know it's… I'm not _ guilty _ about it, but still, they should _ know. _"

Ruby came out of the bathroom and paused at the sight of them all together. "Everything okay?"

Blake smiled, patting the bed beside her. Ruby didn't need further encouragement.

They waited for her to begin, but for a moment it seemed like Blake was about to lose her nerve. She took a breath as if to speak, then let it out in a huff. "For the record," she said. "I told Yang about this when we got together, and I didn't mean to keep it a secret from you two. It's just never come up, and I… honestly, I was a little scared of how you'd react."

Ruby turned and hugged her, pressing her face into Blake's neck. "It's okay," she said. "Whatever it is, I promise we won't be weird about it."

Weiss nodded in agreement, reaching out to hold Blake's hand. "I know I have a… _ somewhat poor _ history of reacting to personal revelations," she said, her dry tone drawing the slightest smile to Blake's face. "But I'd like to think I'm a bit better about that sort of thing these days."

Still, she couldn't help but worry a little. _ With all that we know of Blake's past in the White Fang, what could be so sensitive she'd never share it until _ ** _now?_ **

Blake shook her head, smiling softly. "It's not because I don't trust you," she said. "I think a few people might have guessed, but I haven't _ told _ anyone at Beacon about this aside from Yang and the medical staff."

And _ that _ set off a whole new avalanche of worries. _ Medical staff? Is Blake ill? Have I just never noticed it? _ Weiss frowned in realization. _ Wait, she does have those pills she takes every morning, doesn't she? I've seen her sneak the bottles into the bathroom when she changes. Is that why? What does she have, is she alright? _

"I'm..." Blake paused, shutting her eyes tight and taking a deep, hard breath. "I'm transgender."

…

Ruby blinked, looking up from Blake's shoulder. "Oh. Uh. Is that it?"

Yang stared at her sister like she couldn't decide whether to be mortified or start cackling. Blake just looked stunned. "Uh... yeah. That's it."

"So that's what those pills were," Weiss muttered, relaxing into Blake's shoulder with a sigh. "Good heavens Blake you had me worrying myself into an early grave."

"You're like, a girl, right?" Ruby asked. "Like, a trans girl? Or are you a trans boy?" She kicked her feet. "Um, sorry if that's a weird thing to ask, I just wanna get it right."

"Um…" Blake tilted her head, ears flicking nervously. "Girl… mostly? It used to be pretty solid, but…" she held up a hand, wiggling it back and forth, "...it's been wavering a bit, these days."

"You _ do _look really good in a suit," Yang noted, a grin spreading across her face as the tension began to drift out of them.

"Oh, you _ certainly _do," Weiss muttered, recalling last night with vivid clarity. Her smile started wicked, teasing, but quickly shifted to a gentler place when she saw the rigid set of Blake's shoulders. "Please let us know if it's ever appropriate to refer to you differently. I'd like you to feel comfortable, and I'm sure Ruby feels the same."

"Ruby feels the same!" Ruby cheered. "Seriously, tell us whatever makes you feel good, and we'll do it, no problem."

Blake stared at her, the tension slowly going out of her shoulders. "You're… taking this pretty well."

"I mean..." Ruby shrugged. "What other way is there to take it? We love you. Why would this change that?"

Weiss gave a prim nod. "I... admittedly don't know much about the subject, but I certainly don't have any problem with it. You're not the first transgender person I've known, or even that I've been close with. It's hardly an issue."

Blake's throat bobbed. "Uh, okay. Cool." She paused, looking between them. "I… guess I _ shouldn't _ be surprised by this but, _ thank you. _"

The words carried all the weight that'd been on her back. It nearly bowled the others over, but they clung to her still, Ruby giggling into Blake's collarbone as Weiss rolled her eyes affectionately, and said, "You're not getting rid of us that easily, you know."

From Blake's lap, Yang smiled sunlight up at them all. 

* * *

They didn't stop her or question her when she slipped off to the bathroom anyway, but Blake still let out a breath of relief as she shut the door and pressed her back against it.

Her brain was still screaming that she'd just done something incomparably stupid, that any second she'd hear them start to talk through the door about how she'd tricked them, or how they'd have to help her overcome her delusions, or—

_ "Where's all this coming from, Blake? You're a boy, and you've always been a boy. I think I'd have noticed if you weren't." _

A wince. That part… she'd never told Yang about.

She sighed, letting herself sink down to the floor, pulling her bundled-up clothes to her chest.

_ "Stop being delusional. If you're a girl, then why am I still in love with you? I've been attracted to men my whole life; you're saying that this _ ** _once_ ** _ , I got it wrong?" _

She pressed her forehead into her knees. He wasn't here. He didn't have any power over her. What he thought, what he'd said, they didn't matter. Her life was different. Her _ love _was different.

_ "What, is this about Ilia? Do you really hate our relationship so much, that you'd destroy your body to make someone else love you?" _

She shook her head, sighing as she forced herself off these thoughts. Took a breath. Counted to ten. Let it out.

Yang wasn't anything like him. Weiss even less. _ Ruby even less. _ It was easy to let the old words get to her—to think, "yes, I did this to myself so Yang would love me"—but just so, she recognized how odd it would have been to start transitioning so that _ a bisexual human woman she'd never met _ would fall in love with her years later in a place she wasn't even planning to go.

All of it was like that. The manipulation still stuck with her, but none of it made _ sense _ anymore. Easily debunked, more annoyance than threat, but still _ there _. Perhaps it always would be.

With a sigh, she finally scooted out of her clothes and set them aside. She glanced down at her body, at the good parts and the bad ones, at all of it.

_ I fought for this scarred flesh. I fought the world, I fought myself… and I fought _ ** _him._ ** _ This body isn't his, it's _ ** _mine._ **

_ I am _ ** _mine._ **

A flutter in her chest, in three parts. A giddy smile.

_ Well, maybe not _ ** _exclusively _ ** _ mine. _

Moments later, wrapped in tight black pants and a flowing white shirt, she stepped out the bathroom door and into a hug from Ruby. "Blaaaake," the girl cheered, burying her face in… a very comfortable place.

Blake's eyebrows rose an amused half-inch. "You really like it there, huh?"

"Soft…" Ruby giggled. Then, suddenly tense, she glanced up. "Um… this is okay, right? Sorry, I should have asked."

All the gods in every pantheon couldn't have cried _YES _loud enough, but Bake still pretended to give it a little thought. "Mmm I suppose you're allowed," she said. "But only because you asked so nicely."

"Yaaaay," Ruby murmured, and returned herself to where she wanted to be. "I'm the best at this."

Weiss rolled her eyes affectionately at the display. She and Yang were still on Blake's bed, the former sitting primly and tapping at her scroll. Her free hand stroked through the mass of golden locks in her lap. Yangs eyes were closed, an easy, unguarded smile on her face. 

A flash of incomprehensible energy flashed through Blake at the sight, and she found herself drifting her fingers carelessly through Ruby's hair. The girl let out a happy murmur and squeezed her tighter, and Blake found herself entirely overwhelmed.

It was still real. Maybe someday she'd believe it.

Weiss coughed into her hand, drawing them all back to the real world. "It's almost eleven and we haven't even eaten yet," she said. "I hate to interrupt your little _ moment, _but shouldn't we start on our plans for the day?"

"Aaaactually…" Yang sat up, shuffling to sit beside Weiss on the edge of the bed. "I was gonna go hit the gym for a bit?" She passed an apologetic look around the room. "I think I need a little space, to process…" She made a vague gesture at the universe, to various nods of understanding.

At a gentle nudge, Ruby released Blake so the latter could go and give Yang a quick peck on the lips. "Meet back up for breakfast?" Blake asked.

A devious grin lit up Yang's face. "Totally! And since you'll have some time before I'm done… why don't you go do that thing. Y'know. The one you did back when we started dating?"

Blake's heart skipped a beat. _ Does she mean…? _

She darted her eyes towards the south wall, a question in the tilt of her brow. Yang nodded, still grinning.

"What's this about?" Weiss asked, giving Blake a curious look.

Blake felt a flush at the attention. "It's… Well, it's kind of embarrassing. I _ was _going to do it later today, but I guess if I have time now it wouldn't be a bad idea."

"Where are you going?" Ruby asked, coming up behind her.

"Well…"

He rushed back into her head.

_ "You're still holding onto those childish superstitions? The gods were made up to control people. To control _ ** _us._ ** _ To mold us into what the kingdoms want us to be. You'd really sell yourself off to the enemy like that?" _

A hand closed on hers, warm and familiar. Yang looked at her, smile gone, and Blake took a moment to recenter herself in her eyes. The moment passed quickly, but she still needed to remind herself where she was, who she was with. Not him. Never him _ again. _

A small body hugged her tight. Delicate fingers found her other hand, gently holding without any demand, and Blake found the memories drifting away like distant stormclouds.

She sighed, relaxing into their touch. Her body was her own, but so were the other things, the rest of herself. And, just like her body, she wanted to share those other parts of herself with the people she loved. "I'm going to perform a little ritual at a shrine," she said, once she was recentered. "Just to ask one of the gods for a small blessing on our behalf. Like Yang said, it's something I did with her when we started dating. So… I figured it was only appropriate to go again."

"Ooooh!" Ruby latched herself tighter to Blake's back. "Blake, that sounds really cool! Can I come with you?"

"Um…" Blake fumbled for words in the glow of that sudden interest. "Well… it _ is _ traditional to go with one's new partner. Or, partners?" She sighed, hesitation and anxiety taking hold again. "But, you certainly don't _ have _to. I can do the ritual alone if you don't want to be a part of it."

Ruby tugged her shoulder, and Blake turned to find a great big beaming smile on her girlfriend's face. "It's okay!" Ruby said. "I dunno much about shrines and stuff, but it sounds like this is something that's important to you, and if it's important to you I want to know more about it! It won't weird me out, and even if it does, I'm a big girl. I can deal."

Heat tinged Blake's cheeks. What was she supposed to say to that, to eyes like those, shining with so much curious affection? With open acceptance of all that she was?

"I wouldn't mind going as well," Weiss ventured, though a mote of caution tinged her voice. "If that's appropriate, of course?"

Blake squeezed her hand, looking back at her with a growing smile. "That's fine. Actually, it's great. I'd be really happy if you did." At Weiss's relieved nod, Blake turned one last curious look at Yang. "You're sure don't want to be there?"

Yang shook her head. "Nah," she said. "I do need some space, and besides…" she darted her eyes at Ruby. "I don't think I'd be comfortable with the symbolism." She then glanced at Weiss. "I know that means Weiss and I won't technically have Pthala's blessing, but I'm pretty sure the two of us can come up with our own way to make things _ holy." _

The wink she gave Weiss was not subtle, nor was the way Weiss's neck lit up in response.

Blake chuckled, quietly cursing herself for forgetting to think about how the sisters would feel about things. She'd have to be careful about that in the future. "Okay," she said, leaning in for a parting kiss. "See you at breakfast?"

"Yup." Yang beamed, waving them off. "You three get going, I gotta grab my gym stuff. Oh, and Rubes?"

Ruby tilted her head "Hm?"

"You get both girls now, I get them both later. Sound good?"

Ruby giggled, in a way that made Blake suddenly feel very, _ very _warm, and made Weiss clutch at her arm for support.

"Sounds good to me, sis!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooooooh.
> 
> This chapter is really personal to me for a lot of reasons. If Blake's experiences, particularly those with Adam, seem unlikely or weird to you, I submit that they're mostly based on actual things I've had happen to me or been told in the past, or based on secondhand accounts of friends.
> 
> One of my biggest regrets with this story is not foreshadowing Blake being trans more effectively. It *is* in there, but there are several places where, in hindsight, it would have been easy to slip in hints. Stuff like her popping a couple pills at breakfast, or her parents having a slightly different reaction to seeing her again. 
> 
> But... Move Onward, Not There Yet, right?
> 
> Anyway, thanks to FriendOfYggdrasil and Sgt. Chrysalis for the beta! And thank all of you for reading!


	4. To Be Seen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor TWs for mentions of alcoholism (it's Qrow) and mild alcohol consumption.
> 
> EDIT: Changed a minor color detail from red/pink to blue/green for consistency reasons, and changed the names of some of the gods to fit a specific theme.

Blake led them out towards the south end of campus. It was an odd, misty morning; the sun blushed through a faint haze of clouds, while dark colors over the western horizon promised rain later in the evening. The grassy lawn sparkled with dew, dotted with the stubby shoots of flowers soon-to-be.

Ruby's feet fell softly on the white brick path, nervous excitement spinning her thoughts. She wiggled to bump into Weiss's side, glancing meaningfully at their girlfriend(!!!!) Weiss pondered for the barest sliver of an instant, then flashed back a resolute smile.

With practiced coordination, the two of them stepped casually up to Blake's sides. Blake shot glances back and forth, but the playful suspicion in her eyes quickly gave way to quiet joy as two hands brushed hers in tandem.

No verbal clarification was needed. Blake's fingers moved like lightning, catching her girlfriends(!!!!!!!) fingers and clasping them.  _ Tight.  _ Ruby giggled, utterly charmed by the silly, blushy smile on Blake's face and the feigned annoyance on Weiss's. It was dumb; Ruby knew it, they all knew it, but that didn't make it any less lovely to walk down the road hand-in-hand.

Still… Ruby's smile slipped as questions swirled in her head. Blake's gender stuff didn't really change anything as far as she was concerned, but…

"So Blake!" she tried, uncertain where exactly to begin. "I didn't know you were religious. What… uh, kind, of religious are you?" She shut her eyes regretfully.  _ Good job at words, Ruby! _

Blake laughed, squeezing Ruby's hand. "Well… I don't exactly advertise it, but I'm a Kanzakhist."

Ruby tilted her head, a bit thrown. That wasn't one she'd heard of before.

Weiss made a quiet sound of recognition. "That's Mistrali, isn't it? I'm not particularly familiar with the faith myself, but I've certainly heard of it."

Blake nodded. "It's not actually very popular in Mistral itself, but it's widespread throughout southern Anima and some parts of Menagerie. It's what I grew up with." She took a breath and let her ears lay flat as a note of shame entered her voice. "I only started practicing again recently, though."

Ruby squeezed her hand. There was obviously some deep pain there, but she wasn't really sure how to soothe it. "Why'd you stop?" she asked gently as she could, hoping she wasn't digging at a wound.

Blake smiled, gazing wistfully off down the path. "In the White Fang…" she began, "or at least, in the branch I was part of, religion was seen as a means of control—a tool used by the kingdoms to keep their citizens happy and complacent." She huffed. "And honestly I  _ still  _ believe that's true, sometimes, but…" She shook her head. "But the Kanzakh is an important part of my heritage. Coming back to it has been huge for me."

Ruby murmured an acknowledgement, but it was still tricky to wrap her head around. "I don't really get it," she admitted. "Religion wasn't really a thing for me growing up." She fixed a determined grin on Blake. "But I love you, and if this is an important part of who you are, then I wanna know everything about it! No matter how weird or different it seems to me at first, I'm gonna love every part of you."

A pause ensued, and for a moment Ruby worried she'd said something wrong. Then she noticed Weiss giving them both an affectionate smirk.

"I think you broke her," Weiss said, shooting eyes at Blake, who was trying to bury her face in her shirt collar.

Ruby giggled, even as a surge of worry dashed up her neck. "Sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel weird! I just, um." Her free hand fluttered as she struggled to find more words to say, and came up empty.

Blake collected herself and gave Ruby a shining smile. "You are  _ far  _ too good at telling people you love them," Blake said, grinning as she pulled her hand free to wrap Ruby in a one-armed, hug.

The tension went out of Ruby's body as she felt Blake's lips brush her forehead. "Awww," she hummed. "Well, I try."

Blake sighed, gently letting Ruby go so they could continue walking down the path. "So the short version…" she began, her ears folding back like they always did when she was nervous. "The word Kanzakh literally just means 'circle.' It's an umbrella term for a pantheon of gods, all considered to be part of the same grand cosmology. The general idea is that every aspect of the universe is part of an infinitely large but perfectly connected whole, and the gods are… abstract representations of each part of that whole."

She paused, looking up as they passed out of the shadow of one of the school's warehouses. Ruby followed her sight, and found herself rooted to the spot.

The temple was a tall, round building at the far end of the school. It seemed like almost an afterthought in the campus layout, something added in long after the rest was set in stone. It stood a bit down the gradual slope of the hill the whole school was on, nearly crushed up against the low brick perimeter wall, sharing its landscape with an anti-Grimm turret pointed out at the woods and sky beyond. The shimmer of a hardlight barrier hung eerily behind it, making it seem not quite real.

It was cut from the same white brick much of the school was. Three rows of arched niches ringed the building's walls, each enclosing a statue. There were dozens of them, varying wildly in shape and size, some brightly painted, others pristine white or black marble. The roof was painted vivid blue, like a mirror to a different, uncloudy sky, and thin stripes of the same color ringed the stonework between the statues.

Ruby found herself a little overwhelmed. "All of those are gods?" she asked, squinting as they approached. Blake said the Kanzakh was supposed to represent the entire universe… but that was still a  _ lot  _ of statues.

Blake chuckled. "Those are… some of them, yes. This temple is mostly just used by students or faculty who originally came from Menagerie or Mistral, like me. Since patronage is pretty light, this temple only has shrines for the most popular gods." She paused, frowning. "And only half of those, anyway."

Weiss had been staring at the statues in awe, but finally snapped out of it at Blake's shift to a darker tone. "Half?"

Blake hesitated, her ears laying flat again. "So… The Kanzakh can actually be considered two distinct halves. There's the Luix Kanzakh, the 'Light Circle…' and the Nuix Kanzakh which I guess best translates as 'Dark Circle.' The two Circles are mirrored—every god of Light has an equal one in the Dark, and you're not supposed…" She bit back her words, sighing dejectedly. " _ I  _ was taught, that you're not supposed to separate the two. The complete whole—the  _ Vediir Kanzakh— _ is itself a sacred concept. But in Vale… that's not really something that's allowed."

Weiss frowned, perplexed. "How do you mean?"

Blake shook her head. "It's a huge culture clash. Both here and in Anima, the aesthetic concepts of Light and Dark are deeply ingrained into religion and morality… but they mean  _ vastly  _ different things. In Vale, Dark is just the absence of Light. Light is joy, art, love, life… everything  _ good. _ And the Dark is what's left when that's gone. Death. Emptiness. The Grimm." She took a slow breath, her eyes flicking sharply to Ruby. bearing an expression which was difficult to name. "But, Kanzakhism holds that Light and Dark are distinct and opposite existences, like the poles of a magnet. People stand in the center, possessing both aspects in equal measure. As such, the Dark gods are, to most Kanzakhists, just as important as the Light gods."

"Wow…" Ruby murmured, her brows pinching together as she tried to wrap her head around the idea. She'd never really thought about it before, but just the idea of worshipping a "Dark God" felt inherently… uncomfortable. Almost like—

It hit her like a slap in the face. "Oh," she said, her eyes bugging out. "And people in Vale think… they think you worship  _ Grimm,  _ don't they?"

Blake nodded glumly. "Yeah." A sudden exhaustion seeped into her expression, sending a spear through Ruby's heart.

"That's terrible," Weiss muttered, her eyes cast down to the path. "I didn't realize these concepts held so much weight." She shook off whatever she'd been thinking, and inclined her head to the temple. "What's missing then? If they are mirrors to one another, then what does the Dark hold that the Light does not?"

Blake smiled sadly. "So many things. The Dark… to us, it's where dreams are born. Where secrets are kept. It's peace, tranquility, safety… and depending on your interpretation, even  _ order,  _ where light is chaos and change. A huntress going into battle might pray to Rilg for victory, but pray to his dark half, Cinur, that she survives to return home to her family." She shrugged, sadly. "It's hard to explain. Just different."

Further explanation trialed off as they reached the temple proper, walking up to the great entrance. Two gods stood on either side, their arms reaching out to cup a huge disc at the apex. They both looked the same, faunus men in flowing robes without faces. One had a stag's antler's rising from his head. The other had the horns of a goat. Both were carved in white marble.

Ruby froze, staring up at them in sudden awe. Something about the image felt…  _ profoundly  _ unsettling.

"These two," she said, gesturing up at the colossal statues. "Was… was one of these supposed to be a Dark god?"

Blake looked at her in shock. "Y-yes, actually—"

"The one with the goat horns?" Ruby asked. Her eyes  _ itched. _

Blake gave a silent nod.

Ruby kept on staring at the statues, trying to find answers to questions she barely understood. Her eyes lingered on the goat faunus's skin, the pale white stone, and it clicked.  _ That's it. It's not that the image it's wrong, it's the color. They're not the same, they should  _ ** _never _ ** _ be the same. They're two interlocking parts. Magnets pulling from different poles. _

In the back of her head, a strange pressure was building. Something that tinkled like bells, uncannily familiar.  _ But… why does it feel so… uncomfortable to look at them like this? Why do I  _ ** _know _ ** _ that this isn't correct? _

She felt hot—not warm like hugs, hot like iron in a furnace. It  _ hurt,  _ but it also felt…  _ natural.  _ More natural to her than breathing ever could be—

"Ruby?" Weiss was looking at her. "Are you alright?"

Ruby shuddered, as the pressure abruptly cut off. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and she glanced about in shock. "Y-yeah?" she said, blinking the last of that weird feeling out of her eyes. "Um, sorry, I dunno. It just… I guess cause there were two of them?" She looked up again, feeling that same odd discomfort, only a bit less. "And they're holding that disc—is that Remnant? The Kanzakh, it's Remnant?"

"Mhmm?" Blake gave her a very long stare. "Have you… heard of the Brothers before? Luix and Nuix?"

Ruby tilted her head. "Um… maybe. I dunno. I think maybe my uncle said something about them once?" She shook her head as the last of the strange feeling faded away. "But he didn't say much. He's really grumpy about religion in general, I think? Dunno why."

"Are you  _ sure  _ you're okay?" Weiss asked again. She took a step closer, flanked by Blake. "Ruby… what just happened?"

Ruby shook her head. "I… dunno." She looked at her girlfriends, saw the worry in their eyes.

She was fine, but to see them worry so much… it touched a tender nerve in her.

"Guyyyys," she moaned. "I'm okay!" She wrapped them both in a big hug, squeezing them all together. "Really." She looked up at Blake, determination in her stare. "We're here for a reason, right?" she asked.

Blake cracked a smile, hugging her back. "Right."

* * *

Ruby found herself staring as they passed through the doorless entryway. Intricate spirals and curves were etched deep into every surface, creating new geometries as they wove in and out of one another, intricate patterns of Light and Darkness. The pattern was mirrored around the entryway, but aside from the symmetry Ruby couldn't see a single place where the pattern meaningfully repeated itself.

The effect was  _ mindbending, _ like staring a rushing ocean, or the canopy of a forest, and that was  _ before  _ the passage opened into a huge central chamber, its round ceiling reminding Ruby at first of the museum before the layout broke her out of it. 

There were no chandeliers, for a start—instead, the room was lit by… Ruby struggled for a word. Sconces? Was that when you called it when there were huge pillars set into the wall with what looked like  _ bonfires  _ burning on top of them of them? The basic impression was impressive enough, but there were mirrors set behind each flame, and the stonework itself was such that the light was all reflected into the room. The fires were from pure burn dust—smokeless and steady, with a faint red tinge.

Blake squeezed her hand as they walked to the center of the hall. The place was mostly deserted, only a few students passing through. Blake seemed to know a few, waving casually as they passed. She walked to the round granite desk at the center, where an old woman in ornate robes sat in a disorientingly modern office chair with a computer set up in front of her. She regarded Blake curiously over her spectacles, eyes darting to the hands she held.

"My my," she said. "A pleasure seeing you again, Blake."

"You too, Lazuli," Blake took a breath. "I'm… I'd like to conduct another ritual to Pthala." The woman's eyes narrowed, and Blake shook her head hastily. "It's… an  _ addition,  _ not a replacement."

"Oh…" the woman sat back in surprise, eyeing Ruby and Weiss with sudden interest. "I see. Unconventional of you… but I doubt Pthala would mind. You have your prayer prepared?" She smirked, patting the top of her monitor. "I'm pretty thorough, but I'm not sure even  _ I  _ could find one for your situation."

"I know what I'm going to say," Blake said, smiling back. "Is the shrine free?"

"It is indeed." The woman stood, smoothing out her robes. "Pardon me briefly; I'll go prepare it for you."

Blake thanked her, and ushered Ruby and Weiss over to a stone bench set into the floor. 

As they sat, Ruby fidgeted. This seemed really cool, but… it was also starting to feel really  _ heavy. _ She glanced at Weiss, who echoed her uneasy expression.

Taking that as a cue, Weiss fixed Blake with an even stare. "So what exactly are we here to do?" she asked. "And what's this about 'additions' being better than 'replacements?'" Her cheeks flushed. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to make assumptions but this is all starting to feel rather…  _ marital,  _ and frankly I'm a little uncomfortable with that."

Astonishment washed over Blake's features. "Oh, no, well, um." She paused. "Not… exactly?" she tried, smiling sheepishly. "It's not… it's not  _ binding." _

"But… it's kinda like that?" Ruby said, her heartbeat quickening. An image, Blake in a suit, with her and Weiss in matching white dresses, danced its way frantically through her mind. It wasn't a  _ bad  _ image, but it was a little, kinda,  _ extremely  _ intimidating.

"No." Blake took a deep breath. "It's more like…" She clapped her hands together, holding them in front of her. "So, weddings are ultimately ceremonies, right? They're rituals, used to mark a particular step in a relationship."

Ruby nodded, still uncertain.

"Okay, well, imagine that you split that up," Blake said, she pulled her hands apart, spreading them wide. "Imagine if you didn't just have one ceremony, but several. Dozens. A ceremony for the first time you kissed. A ceremony for the first time you went on a date. H-had sex. Had… decided to have children."

Ruby was not feeling any less uneasy about all this, but Weiss suddenly perked up, snapping her fingers. "Ah! So you're saying this is… an initial ceremony? To commemorate the start of our relationship?"

Blake nodded frantically. "Yes! Exactly! That's exactly it."

That… sounded less scary. "Okay," Ruby said, pinching her knees together. "I. Um. I'm okay with that."

"I'm so sorry," Blake said. She shifted anxiously, her ears pinned back as she stared at Ruby with a look of profound regret. "I got so caught up in talking about the Kanzakh itself—I should have explained what we'd actually be  _ doing  _ before we got here." Her shoulders hunched a little further. "This… this is just  _ normal _ to me. I'm sorry I didn't think about how it would seem to the two of you."

Ruby looked up, trying for a reassuring smile. In hindsight, she knew it was silly to have been worried. Yang said she'd done this with Blake before, and they definitely weren't  _ married. _ Plus, Blake would never spring something like that on them without warning first. "It's okay," she said, with returning conviction. "That's… really neat, actually." She glanced up at the huge vault of the ceiling. "Still kiiinda intimidating, but I trust you." She felt something gnaw at her gut, and in a moment of bravery, slid along the bench to press up against Blake's side. "And… I probably shouldn't have assumed stuff either. I was trying to fit this into how stuff works in Vale, but it's  _ different.  _ I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions." She wasn't sure what else to say, so she settled for leaning her head on Blake's shoulder.

"Likewise," Weiss said. She stood, walking to Blake's other side and sitting down neatly. Then, after an extended moment of hesitation, primly plopped her own head on Blake's other shoulder.

Blake let off a quiet chuckle, shrugging her arms free to pull them both into hugs. "Y'know, you two've gotta stop making me the center of attention; I might just get used to it." She sighed, a faint tremor slipping into her voice. "Thanks."

Ruby made a happy sound, and nuzzled into Blake's side. "So…" she said, once the power of speech seemed a little less supernatural, "What exactly  _ are _ we doing?"

"Well…" Blake shifted, hugging them both a little tighter. "We're going to see Pthala, the god of love, among… other things."

Weiss glanced up at her. "Other things?"

"…Sex, sometimes," Blake sighed. Ruby flushed again, and felt Blake squeeze her in response. "But… in our case, love. Pthala has domain over romantic relationships at all stages, so it's common to perform a small ritual to them whenever entering or exiting a relationship." A breath. "Also… well, Kanzakhists tend to choose a few specific gods as patrons. And… Pthala is one of mine."

"Really?" Weiss murmured. "Why specifically?"

"A couple reasons?" Blake shifted to scratch her head. "For one… Pthala is often seen as a patron of intersex, trans, and genderqueer people because…" her cheeks darkened, "...of reasons. But more than that, it just felt  _ right _ for me, I guess?" She tilted her head back. "Pthala is love, and passion, but they're also loyalty, and courage, and compassion, and… a lot of things I aspire towards."

"Awww," Ruby planted a kiss on Blake's shoulder. "Well, if they're as good at those as you then they're a real sweetie."

Weiss laughed. "I couldn't have said it better."

Footsteps drew their attention. "The altar is ready," Lazuli said. She regarded them with her hands folded in front of her, eyebrows shrewdly elevated.

Blake smiled back. "Thank you," she said, gently pressing the others forward. They stood, and Blake bowed her head slightly. "I really appreciate it. Sorry if this was any extra trouble."

Lazuli rolled her eyes. "Oh please," she groused. "You're hardly the strangest lovers who've come through here. It's not even the first time this sort of thing—" she glanced meaningfully at Weiss and Ruby, then back to Blake "—has come up." She sighed, a smile slipping onto her weary face. "I overfilled the ritual cup, but I'd say no more than two sips each if you want to leave some for Pthala."

A breath caught in Blake's throat. " _ Thank you, _ " she said, dipping her head lower. "You're  _ far  _ too kind."

"Oh stop that already and go prepare, shoo!"

They fell quiet as Blake led them to a huge spiral staircase on the temple's wall. They climbed, passing countless ornate doors, all carved and painted, each one unique. They reached the third level, and the doors only seemed to get bigger and more complicated. Ruby found herself intimidated again. Her head spun as they passed one of the bonfires, the heady scent of incense rising from the strangely placid flames.

The door Blake led them to was sandwiched between two huge ones, one carved with geometric spirals and the other painted with bright floral patterns. Pthala's, by contrast, was simply a small stone archway, carved with simple, flowing lines. A thick blue curtain hung across the width. The only symbolic ornamentation was a single carved disc, set into the peak of the arch.

Ruby felt another bout of nerves, and latched onto Blake's arm for support. "So…" she began. "What are we supposed to do?"

Blake smiled, and shook her head. "Just follow my lead," she said. "I'll be leading the ritual, so I'll do most of the talking, and the rest isn't all that complicated." She blinked, stopping suddenly. "Oh, um. There's a part of the ritual where you drink a bit of wine. Is that okay with you?"

Ruby's neck went cold. An image of Uncle Qrow flashed through her head, accompanied by a bolt of anxious sadness. Vaguely, she heard Weiss say something that sounded like "I don't mind," and shook herself back ot the moment.

"As… long as it's only a little," she said, mostly certain she meant it.

Apparently the hesitation had slipped into her voice. "Ruby?" Weiss asked, shifting to look at her. "Are you sure? You sound nervous, is everything alright?"

Ruby took a breath. "Um… honestly? I dunno. I don't think I can say until I see what you mean, but… I'm really not comfortable with alcohol."

Blake went utterly pale. She'd backed away a step, her hand moving to her mouth in shock, ears pressed flat against her head. She shook herself, putting on a smile so fake it hurt to look at. "It's okay," she said, her voice faint. "You… I… I'm sorry, I should have checked earlier. It's fine if you don't want to do this, we can stop right now and go back, and it'll be fine."

They didn't speak for a second, Blake shifting uneasily from foot to foot, Weiss glancing between them in shock and worry, like she wanted to help but didn't know what to say.

And Ruby realized something.

All of them had their share of secrets, but it  _ wasn't  _ a secret that Blake had the most, and Ruby had never blamed her for that. Blake was a complicated woman, with an incredibly complicated past. If the four of them held a big dumb contest for "most fucked up childhood," Blake won hands down. And in team RWBY that was saying something.

Blake kept her secrets because those secrets had  _ teeth _ .

But all morning, Blake had been revealing parts of herself to Ruby and Weiss. Just like years ago, when she'd accidentally outed herself as a faunus and a former member of the White Fang, except this time she'd done it intentionally. Because she  _ trusted  _ them. 

But still, she was  _ scared. _

Scared that they'd reject her for the body she was born into.

Scared that they'd think the gods she worshipped were Grimm.

Scared that they'd misunderstood what this ceremony meant, would reject her without trying to understand.

And now, scared that she'd carelessly violated one of Ruby's boundaries, in the last moments before sharing something sacred and beautiful with her.

And the worst part was, she'd been  _ right,  _ at least about the last one.

But… it wasn't because she didn't care about Ruby. Or because she wanted to hurt her. 

The fact was, Ruby had never mentioned her aversion to alcohol before. Even Yang didn't know the full extent of it. It just hadn't mattered until this moment. Ruby's secrets had their own thorns, and with all that her teammates had going on she hadn't wanted to burden them with something that she ultimately considered a minor problem. She knew it was a silly thing to worry about, and any comparison to Blake's stuff was  _ really  _ pushing it, but there it was.

Plus, Blake  _ had  _ checked, just a little late. Because they were all excited, and there was so much to cover, and…

Ruby blew out a sigh, and ran a hand through her hair. This really was a mess.

She took a breath to settle her nerves, and met Blake's eyes with her own. "How much alcohol?" she asked.

Blake's eyes widened. Her hand rose to pinch a sliver of air between thumb and forefinger. "The content is low," she said. "Less than most wine. It's ceremonial; you're not supposed to get intoxicated."

Ruby took a deep breath. She held up her fingers, mirroring Blake. "This much?"

Blake nodded.

Ruby took the measure of the situation, thinking it through.

_ Blake doesn't want to hurt me. She trusts me,  _ ** _loves _ ** _ me. And I trust and love her. _

_ And this is something that's deeply important to Blake. My boundaries are important too, and I won't toss them aside just to make Blake feel better, but this isn't us going to some bar and passing out on the steps. _

Her fists tightened, and she looked up at Blake. She nodded, sharply, face pinched in determination. "Okay," she said. "Let's do it."

Weiss stepped in between them, taking Ruby's hand forcefully. "You're certain?" she asked, dead seriousness on her face. "I won't let you be pressured into anything."

Blake nodded, equally serious. "Absolutely not. In fact, honestly, I'd rather not do this at all then have it hurt you." She took a deep breath, her normal steadiness returning for a moment. "The whole  _ point  _ of this ritual is to celebrate how happy we make each other—if it makes  _ you  _ unhappy in the process, then it's tainted at the core. It'd be like cursing our relationship instead of blessing it. We'd be worse off than we started, and…" Her voice broke, her eyes falling to the floor. "That's not even getting into how awful I'd feel if I selfishly drove you into a bad experience for my own gratification. I can't let that happen. I  _ won't. _ "

Ruby shook her head. She reached out, cupping Blake's cheek and turning her head to look at her. "I'm a little spooked," Ruby admitted, smiling into Blake's worried face. "But not by this. What I'm afraid of is something really different. I'll… tell you more about it some time."

She leaned in for a kiss, pressing herself to Blake until she felt the tension start to ebb. She stepped back, took Blake's hand, and looked to Weiss.

The latter, with a smile and a slight blush, reached out and snagged both their hands as well, forming their perfect little triangle.

Blake sighed, tension shifting to exhaustion. She looked to Weiss. "And you're okay with this too? Just to be sure."

Weiss glanced away. "Yes. I… also admittedly have a complicated relationship with alcohol, but I'm not averse to it on principle. Just…" She paused, her normal confidence cracking slightly. "This…really won't intoxicate us?"

"A buzz at most," Blake said, shifting uncomfortably. "Although, if the two of you are lightweights, then… I suppose you might get a little tipsy? I'm not sure, to be honest." She shook her head. "You'll want to take small sips," she said. "Again, it's ceremonial—even a single drop is enough, as far as the ritual is concerned. Please, don't overdo it."

Ruby and Weiss nodded. "Is there anything else we should know?" Weiss asked. "We're going into this a bit blind, and while it's very exciting it… might be good to clear out anything else."

"Right." Blake looked at the door, the blue curtain. "I'll… give you a rundown of what we're doing. Step by step, before we go in. Okay?"

Ruby and Weiss nodded, and Blake started to explain.

A few minutes later, they were ready.

* * *

It was actually several curtains which blocked the passage: two of heavy blue fabric, and a third made of strands of green beads which rattled as Blake pushed them aside. "It's just in here," she said, a growing nervousness in her smile. "Oh, and leave your shoes and socks on this shelf."

Ruby and Weiss did so, the stone floor cold under their feet. The room Blake led them into was small, the size of their bathroom at Beacon, perhaps. It was a bit of a tight fit for three people. There was a beautiful carpet laid across the floor, in front of an altar, atop which stood a statue, surrounded by candles, and the scent of salt and incense.

The god was carved from blue quartz. A veil covered the face from the nose up. One hand held a spear, the other a cup. Hair spilled down the naked body to pool around bare feet, and two wings rose in back, covered in eerie, etched eyes, each pupil set with a gem of glittering black. 

They also possessed… several genders worth of visible organs, Ruby realized with a faint blush.

"This is Pthala," Blake said.

Ruby scanned the walls, settling on the images painted and carved there. Her blush intensified as she recognized the  _ 'other things'  _ Blake had mentioned earlier. She resolved not to examine the depictions too closely, moving to kneel on the carpet beside Blake with a faint flutter in her stomach.

Blake smiled at them, Ruby on her left, Weiss on her right. Her eyes shone amber in the candle light. "Okay," she said. "You're both sure, right? This… we can stop at any time, but this is our last chance to  _ properly  _ back out, if we don't want to offend Pthala."

Ruby chanced blasphemy and planted a quick kiss on Blake's cheek. "I'm ready," she said, rock-hard determination in her guts.

Weiss smiled at them both, before leaning in to plant her own kiss. "We both are," she said. "Please, go ahead, Blake."

Blake took a breath and lowered her head, a smile lingering on her lips.

She lifted her eyes, and spoke. 

"O Pthala, warm wind of spring, who sees with their heart and flies with their eyes. I am a small woman, with a small and fragile heart, but I have found those with whom I would share it's portion." She reached out, grasping Weiss's hand. "Weiss, from the high north, a champion of many trials, a woman who has grown as the winter snow thaws, becoming something new and bold and gorgeous, endlessly dynamic with infinite potential."

Ruby chanced a glance at Weiss, and found a blush deep enough to drown in. Blake had told them what would happen, each phase of the ritual she'd be leading them through, but the words themselves were new, and  _ very  _ sweet.

Ruby snickered, quietly agreeing with Blake's poetic assessment, when Blake's hand found hers…

"And Ruby Rose, from an island in the west, a warrior of unparalleled skill and charm, a woman who grows as the trees do, becoming ever-greater with each passing season, in beauty as in wisdom as in kindness as in strength."

…and now Ruby was the one blushing.

"These two I add to my unions," Blake continued, seemingly heedless of the state she'd just reduced her girlfriends to, "recalling still my bond with Yang Xiao Long, from the same western isle, a warrior of immeasurable cleverness and wit, who grows like the sun rises, brighter and brighter with every second, warming all, yet never setting."

Dizzy, incensed air swirled inside Ruby as she finally remembered how to breathe. She felt warm, and a little hazy, barely restraining a giddy giggle at this woman she loved so much, speaking so highly of her.

"I commission you, Pthala," Blake intoned, "That my small heart may be big enough for them. That our bond may stay, forged as our blades, and never sundered. By anger or by illness, by conspiracy or strife."

"Let us be strong in the Light, and gentle in the Dark."

She tugged their hands up, and Ruby and Weiss repeated her words.

_ "Let us be strong in the Light, and gentle in the Dark." _

"Let us be vulnerable to one another, and yet never cause a wound."

_ "Let us be vulnerable to one another, and yet never cause a wound." _

"Let us be together, and partake of one another in conviviality and serenity, in comfort and in pleasure."

_ "Let us be together, and partake of one another in conviviality and serenity, in comfort and in pleasure." _ Ruby blushed as her mind caught up to the last part; she did her best not to stammer through the final syllable. Her heart was thrumming, and she couldn't quite say why. 

Her eyes were wide, or shut, or neither. The world had grown hazy, and it felt like her hand in Blake's was the only point of reality left to her. 

And then, Blake took her hand away.

An ache of loss lanced momentarily through Ruby's chest as she watched Blake reach out and carefully lift a small ceramic cup from the altar, identical to the one in Pthala's hand. The liquid inside sparkled faintly gold, and smelled of something sweet and sharp.

Blake offered it to Weiss. 

Weiss only took a moment's pause, before nodding resolutely and taking the offered drink. She lifted it to her lips for a moment, perfectly poised and still as a painting. Then, she lowered it and returned it to Blake, who lifted it calmly to her own.

Finally, with a slight tremble of hesitation, Blake offered it to Ruby.

The stoneware was cool in her unsteady fingers. Ruby found herself staring at the liquid—the  _ alcohol— _ and one last conflict raged behind her eyes.

Her uncle burned a hole into her mind. The way he'd slam back half a bottle of bourbon on a bad night and dissolve into incoherence before passing out on the couch. The way he'd argue with her father whenever Tai tried to get him to stop, louder and louder, reverberating through the floorboards of their too-big house.

But, the anxiety waned. There wasn't a real comparison here. Qrow drank to hide from the world. This… Ruby wouldn't let it be the same. This was something  _ sacred _ . Not to hide, but to be  _ seen, _ by something greater than themselves.

Her hands were steady, as she lifted the cup to her lips. The liquid was sickly sweet on her tongue, burning like mouthwash, but she didn't flinch as she let it flow down her throat. And as it did, a fire spread through her, warming her guts and flowing out to the very fringes of her body.

She took her lips away, breathless, realizing with a start that she'd drunk more of it than she meant to. Gently, she handed it back to Blake, who lifted it to her lips again, taking one more sip before passing it back to Weiss.

A blush heated Ruby's cheeks as the meaning sank in.

_ "The ritual is a symbolic kiss,"  _ Blake had said. _ "In drinking from the cup we pass a tiny fraction of our souls into it, and take in what's already there. As such, we become parts of one another, fundamentally linked." _

It felt like a silly thing to get worked up over—Ruby'd kissed both of them on the mouth like five minutes ago!—but somehow her heart just wouldn't stop pounding as Weiss took her own last sip, her cheeks red and her eyes closed.

Blake nodded as she took the cup. She glanced Ruby's way, hesitation in her eyes.

_ "The symbolism only requires that we each drink after the others' lips have touched the cup, but it's traditional for each partner to take two sips, to symbolize equality in the relationship. You certainly don't have to though, please don't if it would make you uncomfortable." _

Ruby shifted, bumping Blake's shoulder. Blake looked, and Ruby gave a small nod.

Blake's eyes widened in surprise and worry, but she passed the cup back again, letting Ruby take it in her small fingers.

This time, Ruby drank without hesitation. She almost imagined she could taste them both, some purified essence in the drink, mixing with the sweet burn of the wine and the scent of the candles in the air. She drew it all into herself, past her aura, past all her defenses, down into her deepest core, letting it become a part of her, fixed in her soul forevermore.

She grinned as she lowered the cup from her lips. She hadn't finished the wine—she knew she wasn't supposed to, for what came next—but it was pretty close, and she found herself fully okay with that. The fire in her guts was setting her ablaze. The candles seemed brighter.

Blake's smile was just as bright as she took the wine back, offering it to the statue. She set the cup down in its place again, then gently took one of the candles and tipped it towards the surface. The alcohol caught, a wash of mesmerizing blue flame covering the surface.

She spoke once more, taking her girlfriends' hands and lifting them towards the ceiling. "Let us love one another as you love us all."

_ "Let us love one another as you love all of us." _

Blake bowed her head low. Ruby and Weiss did the same.

Their hands parted, and Ruby mourned the loss of contact, but then came a new point of blazing touch, clever fingers grazing her chin, lifting her into a kiss that felt like starlight and dew.

She kissed back, desperately warm, ready to lose herself to it, but her partner had more discipline than that, and Blake pulled away after far too short a time, leaving Ruby feeling suddenly alive and weightless, adrift in a nameless space.

She watched in awe as Blake turned and did the same to Weiss, tracing the way Weiss hungrily met her, taut and flushed. Again, Blake held herself firm, not stealing a second more with Weiss than she had with Ruby.

And then they broke apart, and Blake quietly shifted back out of their way.

Ruby and Weiss didn't need any more prompting than that. They moved to each other, and their lips met, and if Pthala or Blake minded that they didn't have the same self-control, neither showed it.

Blake pressed into them, her arms around them, and eventually they all broke to simply embrace each other, tangling themselves and breathing in each other's scents, reveling in their sheer mutual presence.

A strangely long amount of time seemed to pass that way. Ruby wasn't sure if it was the buzz of the alcohol or the flicker of the candles or the presence, just out of reach, of something beyond them all, but she felt warm _ . Profoundly  _ warm. Like all other previous warmth had been a shadow of this, the real thing.

At last, though, Blake pulled them apart, and all of them sat in a breathless silence.

"So is our humble plea," Blake said, her voice throaty and soft. "And thanks for your attention."

There was a long pause, before Blake rose. After a moment, her girlfriends did as well.

"Wow…" Ruby breathed, a slow grin splitting her face. She was dizzy, but her head was  _ clear,  _ in a way she wasn't sure she'd ever experienced before _ . _ "That… was  _ awesome." _

Weiss and Blake both looked at her with clear surprise, but both broke into wide smiles a moment later. "Thank you," Blake said, taking their hands in hers again. "It was alright? You're both okay?"

"Better than okay," Weiss murmured, staring deep into Blake's eyes. "I think I love you  _ very  _ much, do you know that?"

"I think I'm starting to get an idea." Blake's smile softened. "Thank you for doing this with me. I'm sorry it was so stressful at first, I should have explained things better in the first place."

"Thank  _ you  _ for bringing us!" Ruby hugged her tight. "This was beautiful, and I'm really glad we did it." She pressed a kiss to Blake's temple, sighing happily into her hair. "So, we're basically married now, right?"

Blake snorted out a startled laugh. "What? No, of course not!"

Weiss giggled, which was a thing she really should do more of. "If  _ this  _ is what it's like to start dating, I can't imagine what our  _ wedding  _ will be like."

Blake's jaw dropped, mouthing the words  _ "will be"  _ in utter shock. Ruby laughed, hugging them close, flurries of butterflies in her stomach. That same silly image hit her again: her and Weiss in dresses, Blake in that suit. Maybe Yang reading off their vows before she and Ruby traded places. It was still kinda scary, but it was exciting too.

"Thaaaat's probably a thing for Future Team RWBY to worry about," Blake said, finally regaining something resembling her composure. "For now, we should go, though. There may be others waiting to use the shrine."

They left together, but as she shuffled her socks and shoes back onto her feet, Ruby found herself shooting one final glance at the statue on the altar.

Pthala's mouth was upturned, in a slight, gentle smile. Ruby wasn't sure how she hadn't noticed it before.

_ "Thank you,"  _ Ruby whispered, her eyes sparkling as she followed her girlfriends out through the curtains and back into the rest of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooooahhhhh
> 
> This is probably one of the most intense chapters I've written for this fic, and almost certainly the one that stressed me out most to finish up, but I really wanted to do something different, and I *think* I pulled it off. Mostly.
> 
> Anyway, comments are always welcome! And thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, SeventeenFables, and Sgt. Chrysalis for all giving me *extremely* different and useful beta reads. In particular, I'd like to credit Friend for inspiring a lot of the worldbuilding in this chapter, and this whole fic in general, with their phenomenal work I Will Not Scatter (seriously go read it if you like my stuff, it's AMAZING), and Chrysalis for catching what may be the single biggest fuckup I've ever almost published. You guys really saved my ass this chapter, and I can't say how much I appreciate it.
> 
> And as always, thanks to you for reading!
> 
> EDIT: Changed a minor color detail from red/pink to blue/green for consistency reasons, and changed the names of some of the gods to fit a specific motif.


	5. Past and Future

_ "Oh I'm sure you'd love that."  _

She bit out a hiss as she moved. The robot broke under her bare fist, its torso warping and shattering as her aura clubbed into it with the condensed force of a speeding car. The follow-through tossed it aside, another piece of scrap, and it was quickly forgotten as two more took its place. They lunged at her, weaving in and out of her guard, their slick blades cutting air as she backpedaled.

She planted her back foot and countered. A single straight punch twisted and snapped the neck of the first. The next, she took apart in two fluid motions—a leg sweep to put it in the air, twisting into one of her own original moves, a modified axe kick built off the momentum of the earlier attack, which slammed the bot's metal torso into the training floor so hard it came apart in an almost comical explosion of robotic gore.

She sat down, giving herself a moment to breathe. A gear rolled past her hand, tipped, fell onto the mat beside her.

_ The foam of the practice floor soft under her back, the burn of adrenaline in her veins, the quiet ache in her spine, in her side, in her head, all fading fast. The quiet sound of panting breaths beside her, mirroring hers. The voice. _

_ "Yang… do you believe in destiny?" _

She grit her teeth, punching the mat to dismiss the memory. "Fuck," she spat, hauling herself to her feet. She walked over to the wall of the training room. A couple of freshmen waved at her through the reinforced glass, and she forced a smile and waved right back. She knew she had fans, but she tried not to think about that too much. No need for an inflated ego on top of her existing emotional baggage.

She swiped the control panel and keyed up seven robots this time, sparing only a single, solitary fuck for Beacon's budget. 

It was hardly training. Hardly a  _ warmup, _ for her. But it was cathartic, and that was kinda what the tangled and frustrated ball of emotions that was Yang Xiao Long needed right now.

The far wall disgorged the machines, gleaming and sharp as they fell into basic formation and charged. The last three had taken all of about six seconds to dismantle. This, she figured she could pull off in twenty.

_ I've got two problems, so let's start with the easier one,  _ she thought, as she dove into the squad of death machines.

She was jealous. Which was about as impressive an observation as "Blake and Weiss are very attractive," but it still warranted some attention.

_ Break it down. One problem, in three parts. _

Part one: Yang had been dating Blake since last November. It was April now, so in total they'd been together about five months. That was a respectable length for any relationship between people their age, and probably already a new record for Yang, if she was being honest with herself. The connection between her and Blake was unlike anything else she'd ever had. Not  _ absolute  _ trust, but certainly as close as she'd ever come. Love, of the barely-conditional kind.

(She drove a knee into a robot's crotch, not to cause pain, but to give herself leverage to rip its leg off at the hip.)

And now Yang had just sent that true love of her life on a romantic excursion with two other women, one of them her  _ sister. _ Honestly, she was kinda surprised how  _ weak  _ the jealousy was. It'd be absolutely bonkers if she  _ wasn't  _ feeling a little unsteady over it.

(She parried a blade with her aura-coated arm, using the opening to drive a fist into the robot's face. Metal warped and glass shattered around her knuckles.)

The fact that Yang had suggested her teammates do the ritual together, plus the fact that she was dating  _ Weiss  _ now, too… those didn't really factor into her feelings. Which, led her to Part Two of Problem One.

(A robot she'd dismembered had switched its arms to gun mode, and was firing at her from the ground. She dodged around her assailants, slipping into range and crushing its neck with a precise stomp.)

Part Two: Weiss was  _ wonderful. _ Yang did love her, and every time she gave herself time to think about being with her… it was like a supernova inside her chest, all this light and warmth that made her just want to dance around and shout at the sky!

But the idea hadn't really settled in yet. She still loved Blake, and her heart wasn't really prepared to hold two people in it yet. She was quickly getting there, but the idea of Weiss stealing Blake away from her still hurt, even thought she knew none of them would let it happen.

Even though Yang knew she could  _ have  _ Weiss too, if she asked.

And then of course, there was Ruby.

(She loosed a crescent kick with a bit more force than she'd intended, and another robot head banged off the reinforced glass wall of the arena.)

Part Three: There was a part of her that wanted to hug her sister and cackle at how much of a devious little shit she was, to thank her for making this all happen. A part that wanted to sit with Ruby under a tent of covers and pillows and whisper in together in giddy tones about how pretty Weiss was when she let her hair down, or how their hearts both fluttered whenever Blake wore that one tube top.

And there was  _ another  _ part which wanted very much take Ruby and punt her straight through the goddamn  _ moon. _

(She settled for punting a robot into the ceiling hard enough to chip the paint.)

Because how in the sandblasted  _ fuck  _ were they going to make this work? Because frankly, Yang had been  _ pretty happy  _ with her dating life as it stood before last night. Because this was a  _ lot  _ to process, and as much as she loved and believed in Ruby, she still  _ really  _ wasn't sure that  _ any  _ of them were ready for something like this.

She wasn't sure  _ she  _ was ready for this, because for all of that, for all of the legitimate worries that were rattling around in her head, the thing that was actually eating at her? The thing that actually lay on the back of her eyelids, that actually rang in her ears in quiet moments?

It wasn't even  _ them. _

_ "So? You don't have to say yes, obviously, but what's the worst that could happen?" _

_ "We destroy our friendship and alienate several of our closest friends? I've heard that relationships can do that." _

_ Laughter. "Yeah, but I don't think we're  _ ** _that _ ** _ stupid." _

_ Laughter. "I know, Yang, sorry. I'm just a little nervous. But… I suppose… I wouldn't be opposed to the idea." _

_ She'd grinned. "Cool," she'd said, and then the night had spun on, flirtations turning into touches turning into kisses turning into more, until they were tangled together in the morning light, wrapped in the sheets of a bed in an unoccupied dorm room. _

_ She'd woken to a kiss on her nose, to vibrant green eyes looking down at her, crinkled at the edges, dimpled at the smile. _

_ And, like an idiot, she'd smiled right back, and leaned up for a kiss. _

Yang punched the last robot's head off so hard that it exploded against the far wall, stray pieces of shrapnel tearing into the mat. A couple even stuck in the concrete itself, dust pooling below them.

She walked away from the bodies of the fallen, retrieving her sports drink and towel from where she'd left them in the corner—next to the crate of  _ literature  _ she'd picked up from a dazed, rumpled, and very slightly  _ smelly  _ Velvet earlier—and sat with her back against the glass, watching as the cleaning robots dropped from the ceiling to pick up her mess and recycle it for later. One even darted around stitching patches onto the mat itself.

She took a swig, wiped her mouth on her arm, and—hesitantly— glanced at The Box.

It was an actual, honest to starstuff, wooden _ crate, _ divided into fourths by two boards slotted together in an X. The front had an  _ old- _ looking label on it, a smiling rabbit faunus in overalls who looked suspiciously like Velvet, holding up a miniature, old-timey fire truck in her palm.  _ Scarlatina Toys and Contraptions, Proud winners of the Southwest Vale Toy Exhibition, 723-726. _

And it contained, of course, four stacks of books. Each and every one had a colored slip of paper poking out the top.

Yang chuckled affectionately as she pulled a book from the top of her stack.  _ The Sacred V: Jealousy, Boundaries, and Learning to Share your Love. _

Her eyebrows rose in amused surprise, as she opened the cover to read the note, written in Velvet's neat, flowing handwriting.

_ Hey Yang! I figured this was probably a good place for you to start, since you already kinda know what polyamory is. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but I imagine this is going to be hardest on you, at least to begin with. You're now suddenly sharing your girlfriend with two other women, and especially in Ruby's case that's going to mean a lot of complicated feelings and boundaries for all of you to respect. I don't have any books on siblings dating the same person, but I'll let you know as soon as I find one and read through it myself to make sure it's not awful garbage. TwT _

_I recommend you give this one to Ruby after she finishes __The Patient Heart!_ _And of course talk with her yourself if you think anything in this book could help you both. Also of course, if there's ever anything I can help with, don't hesitate to ask!_

_ Also also, I just want to say that I'm very proud of all of you! You're going to be great together, I know it! _

_ <3 _ _   
_ _ V. _

Yang felt a big goofy smile spread across her face. "Aww," she muttered. "Thanks Velvs."

She flipped through the introduction. It was mostly things she already knew intuitively, but seeing them written out in someone else's hand was a neat experience, and it was definitely a good thing to have, given where she was at emotionally. Still, she stopped at the start of the first chapter, slotting the note in as a bookmark. She'd read through it sometime this week, between studying.

Right now, she couldn't focus on it at all.

She huffed, setting the book back on the stack and laying back down to rest her eyes.

_ Alright, Problem Number Two. One part. Face the issue. _

She grimaced. Facing the issue wasn't an issue! The issue was that it hadn't  _ been  _ an issue!

It had only ever  _ been  _ a few hours, a few evenings together. Starting back in their first semester, with some sparring matches that she'd pretended were dates, because she was convinced she could get with the ("mostly") straight girl if she got her in enough headlocks.

Was it better or worse that she'd been right?

_ The cascade of hair down a naked back. Auburn. A beautiful color. She planted kisses between it, earning gasps and giggles for her efforts. _

_ "Hey, babe," she'd whispered, between the touch of lips, nervous and raw. "Would it be cool if I said I loved you?" _

_ A tilted head. A shift in the cascade. "I don't know," Pyrrha had said. "Why don't you try it and find out?" _

Yang almost laughed aloud at the memory. They'd been dumb like that. All silly flirtations and innuendos, but with nerves behind them instead of confidence. Pyrrha was surprisingly good at that sort of thing, but… that was because she worked feverishly at it, just like everything else. It'd almost been enough to make things work.

Still, it ended well. Yang and Pyrrha were still friends.  _ Close  _ friends. They joked and teased each other over the things they'd learned in that hazy week. They didn't pretend it'd been nothing, but they didn't make a big deal about it.

Or, they  _ hadn't _ until yesterday.

Obsessing wasn't helpful, and Yang knew that, but… she just couldn't get that  _ sneer  _ out of her head. The utter void of those green eyes, the total  _ contempt _ , written all over the familiar face of someone she trusted. Someone she still  _ loved _ , even if the shape of it was different.

She'd played it off at the time. Surprised, but ultimately unfazed. But it'd been rattling around the back of her skull ever since. She just couldn't figure out what she'd done wrong. She'd only been able to come up with one answer that made any sense, and it twisted like a knife in her stomach.

_ "You  _ ** _gotta _ ** _ give me an unofficial rematch sometime though, okay? That was the best fight of my  _ ** _life_ ** _ ." _

It wasn't an innuendo, but maybe Pyrrha  _ thought  _ it was? She knew that Yang often considered a friendly spar as good as a date. She'd  _ teased  _ Yang about it endlessly, way back when. Yang was a deeply  _ physical  _ person. The clash and the strain of a good fight were more than just a rush to her—they were one of her favorite ways to  _ connect  _ with people. With friends, with family, with rivals. With  _ lovers. _

They'd stopped sparring together for months after they broke up, specifically to help Yang move on.

Was  _ that  _ why Pyrrha had gotten angry? Was the idea that Yang still had feelings for her  _ so  _ upsetting, on such a gut level that she'd snap like that without even thinking?

Yang put her head back against the glass and slid down it with a wistful groan.  _ I'm obsessing, twisting this way out of proportion. It was just a single comment, and a weird look. But… everyone noticed it. Her teammates rushed her out of the room afterwords. Jaune basically admitted it was something serious, and we're going to have a "talk" about it later, whatever that means. _

_ So it  _ ** _was _ ** _ real. It meant  _ ** _something._ ** _ But… what? What possible reason could she have for saying something like that?  _

_ …Does she  _ ** _regret _ ** _ what we had together? _

The door to the practice arena chimed.

Yang cracked an eye, half-expecting to see Blake, Weiss, and Ruby, having come back from the temple a little early.

Instead, she saw Pyrrha.

She walked in, walked over, and sat next to Yang without a word. She was in her own workout clothes, water bottle in hand, but her hair was all done up, not a stray strand in sight. She'd just arrived, then.

"Hello, Yang," she said. She smiled, awkward as always. That was part of what Yang  _ liked  _ about Pyrrha; she was this huge, graceful, utterly  _ powerful _ presence—but when you got to know her she was just this super awkward dork. It was adorable.

Yang didn't find it too hard to force a smile back. "Hey," she said. "You ah… here to train?"

"Something like that," Pyrrha said.

Her voice sounded… off. Strained. Desperate? But before Yang could analyze it further, Pyrrha stood, and offered her a hand.

"Why don't we go a few rounds?" she said.

Yang looked up in shock, mind whirling to process  _ whatever  _ was happening here. "What? Oh, uh…" She blinked. "Yeah. Sure, cool."

Pyrrha looked askance. "It's not exactly a  _ rematch  _ if we don't have our weapons, but…" she smiled a friendly smile, "think you can still beat me in hand-to-hand?"

Yang let out a startled laugh, head spinning with the whiplash between her thoughts and reality. She slugged back a drink, then tossed her bottle into the corner again. "Sure, hell yeah," she said, meeting Pyrrha's eyes and grinning. She took Pyrrha's hand, and hauled herself to her feet. "What's our end condition? Knockdown? Aura break? Submission?" She resisted the urge to waggle her eyebrows. Probably best not to push her luck.

"Why don't we go with submission?" Pyrrha waggled  _ her  _ eyebrows, and Yang's mind went thoroughly blank. "If you're up for it."

"No auras, grapples only?" Yang asked with a shaky laugh.

Pyrrha gave her a light punch to the shoulder. "Let's not get  _ too  _ carried away," she said. "You can use your semblance if you like, I don't mind."

Again, that same desperation in her smile.

Yang gave her a wary eye her as they squared off. Pyrrha held herself like she always did—loose, confident,  _ scary,  _ but that strange tension coated every little aspect of her, set her just slightly off-kilter.

It was odd, but… Yang smiled, razor-sharp. If Pyrrha wanted to do this? They were doing it  _ right. _

Pyrrha let Yang make the first move. Not that Yang would have let it be any other way, of course, but you could see the hesitation, the way she shifted onto her back foot before Yang had even committed to moving forward. She ducked Yang's opening salvo, weaving between blows and looking for openings for hard blocks and counters. 

It was Pyrrha's signature style—by huntress standards, she wasn't actually particularly strong, but she had  _ unbelievable  _ defense and an uncanny knack for finding her opponent's weakest points and hitting them at the worst possible angle. It worked better when she had her shield to take hits, but she didn't lose any of her skill in a bareknuckle match.

She threw out a sweeping block, catching Yang's arm and hurling it off-course. Before Yang could maneuver herself back out of the way, Pyrrha advanced and slammed two uppercuts into her guts—smashing a wheeze out of Yang's lungs—then casually stepped back out of range, quick as the wind.

Yang came back up with a feral grin, recovering her loose stance rather than going for an immediate counterattack. Sure, those hits hurt like hell, but both girls had their auras up. Pyrrha's fists were jackhammers, but Yang's guts were armor-plated. She'd live. She could feel her semblance growing, the energy crackling inside her bones.

"Gotta say," Yang said, shifting her stance as they circled each other. "I'm impressed. You sure didn't slack off over winter break, huh?"

Pyrrha smiled sweetly. "I went with Jaune to visit his family. Taught one of his nieces a few moves. It was surprisingly good practice."

"Hah," Yang panted. "Glad you're getting along with the in-laws."

Pyrrha laughed. "We're not getting married  _ yet."  _ Some of the weirdness seemed to be easing off her. "What'd you do over the break? I don't think I ever actually asked."

"Had my own in-laws to visit," Yang said. She advanced a step, and Pyrrha retreated, not quite rejoining the bout just yet. "Went with Blake to visit her folks in Menagerie," she continued casually, then quickly darted forward for a few quick jabs, unsurprised when Pyrrha evaded them all.

Pyrrha hummed, bouncing back almost effortlessly, eyes sharp but not deadly. "That must've…" she ducked another punch "…been a big deal. What were they like?"

"Freaking awesome… actually." Yang chuckled, quietly frustrated that Pyrrha could keep such a casual tone while in the middle of a fistfight "Have you ever heard of Ghira Belladonna?" she said, still locked on the other girl's eyes, her stance, looking for any sign that she was going to launch an attack of her own. "Because I sure wish I had before I walked into his house."

"Ghira—" Pyrrha's mouth dropped open. "Gods… isn't he the founder of the White Fang?"

"Yup." Yang shrugged, pretending to let her guard down for a split second, just to see what Pyrrha would do. "He's really chill actually. Blake's mom is  _ way  _ scarier. Order of magnitude."

Pyrrha didn't go for the feint, offering a raised eyebrow and a smile as her only response. Yang sighed, and then rushed forward, closing the gap and loosing more jabs at Pyrrha's head. The strikes found air, as usual, but then Yang mixed up her routine, throwing in a snap-kick. It didn't quite catch Pyrrha's chin, but she felt hair sweep her toes as Pyrrha leaned back to avoid it.

Close, but not close enough. Pyrrha tried to catch her leg in the air, but Yang just barely managed to evade it. She clicked her tongue; that could have been a match-ender. 

"Not a bad move," Pyrrha said, shifting her stance into a slightly more aggressive posture. "You've seriously improved… I'm only barely keeping up with you." She paused. "You know, when we have that proper rematch… I'm not certain I'll win."

Yang barked a laugh. "Hah. You were sure last time?"

"No," Pyrrha smiled easily.

Then suddenly there was a spiral of pain slamming into Yang's nose.

She recovered from what she deduced had been an  _ unbelievably  _ fast straight punch, but Pyrrha was in kill-mode now, and it was all Yang could do to fall back fast enough to avoid being locked down. Pyrrha's defense was plenty scary, but her offense was like rocket surgery; Yang had learned long ago never to let one of Pyrrha's hits land where she'd aimed it.

_ Yang's  _ defense… well, she was better than she'd been at the Vytal festival, at least.

She took six blows on her arms, wincing each time at the spikes of pain through her aura as the crackle in her bones grew and grew. One nearly slipped past to strike her cheek, but she threw out a hard block to slam it away. She was just starting to get a rhythm, when Pyrrha whipped a roundhouse kick out of  _ nowhere  _ and slammed into Yang's side hard enough to throw her off her feet.

She was only in the air for a second, but Pyrrha was coming after her. There was no avoiding the follow-up, but Yang still threw an aura-boosted fist into the ground, boosting her into a seemingly-unpredictable spin, pushing herself farther from Pyrrha for a few precious seconds.

Her feet hit the wall of the training room, sinking into the padding. In the span of a quarter-second, she forced her aura into her legs, eyed the surprised look on her opponent's face, and triggered her semblance. 

She  _ exploded _ towards Pyrrha, rotating into something that might have been a drop kick if you squinted.

Pyrrha pivoted to dodge, and Yang's feet went past her, but she only noticed the hooked arm too late. An elbow closed around her neck hard enough to spark their aura against each other, fire against steel, and then Yang's momentum dragged them both to the ground. The sound Pyrrha made as she went down was somewhere equidistant between a laugh and a gurgle.

Yang landed in a crazily tilted crouch, and scrambled to keep Pyrrha's head under her control. She swung around, pulling the girl into the start of a rear naked choke.

Pyrrha very nearly managed to get out of it, one hand's fingers snapping up to yank Yang's hand out of position, while her other elbow hammered Yang's guts as hard and as quickly as it could.

Yang groaned at the spikes of pain in her ribs, focusing on punching Pyrrha's hand away so she could scrabble her arms into the proper position, locked tight around Pyrrha's neck. She ducked her head forward and squeezed.

A second later, she felt the tap on her forearm.

They both gasped as Yang let Pyrrha go, falling onto the mat beside each other, panting hard as their auras flared to correct all the tiny tears and fractures. The adrenaline started to filter out, and Yang glanced over at her friend with a big grin on her face.

Pyrrha looked back with a wry smile. "Now _ I'm _ … impressed." She extended a hand, and Yang met her knuckles.

"Good fight," Yang wheezed. "Damn, girl. Your… hand-to-hand is… getting a lot scarier. Couldn't have beat you… without my semblance."

"That's a high compliment… from you."

Yang flushed, grinning as she forced herself up. She snagged their drinks, and handed Pyrrha's over. "How ya feelin'?"

"Achey," Pyrrha laughed, her eyes sparkling from the mat. Her hair tie had come undone at some point, and her hair was splayed out around her. Yang hadn't even noticed it happen, somehow, but she found herself having to look away.

_ "Oh, I'm sure you'd love that." _

_ Dammit… _

Yang sat down hard, glancing at the box of books she'd brought with her.  _ Wonder if there's something in there for dealing with the crush you still have on your ex? _

"What's with the library?"

Yang clicked her tongue, shooting a smile Pyrrha's way. "Long story."

Pyrrha smiled back, brushing a strand of hair off her face. "I've got time, you know," she said.

A clench in her heart. Yang shook her head. "In a bit," she said, taking another swig.

Pyrrha hummed acknowledgement, smile drifting off towards the ceiling. "It's been a while since I've lost. Honestly it's refreshing."

Yang thumbed snot, or sweat, or something off her nose. "Still sick of being the Invincible Girl?"

Pyrrha blushed, but didn't retort. She lay her head back on the mat and closed her eyes, slowing her breathing down a bit. A wistful pause. 

Her placid smile set off something in Yang, and she lay back as well, huffing out a grumpy grunt. "Man. How the fuck does Jaune keep up with you anyway?"

Pyrrha cut off a laugh. "He's better than you might expect."

"We're talking about—"

"Yes."

"Great." Yang wheezed out a laugh. "Hey, how do you even get space? Like do you sexile Nora and Ren every now and then, or like—"

" _ Mostly _ it's the other way around…" Pyrrha's chuckle trailed off into a happy sigh. " _ Mostly.  _ It's… funny, actually; It used to be this whole big thing, spreadsheets and everything, but lately it's… I don't know how to explain it. It feels simpler, I suppose?" She huffed. "I imagine things with you and Blake are a bit more difficult."

"Honestly it's pretty fine." Yang stretched her back, cracking some of the aches out of it. "Weiss likes to drag Rubes off on study sessions after classes, so we tend to have a good bit of time to ourselves. More than we need for that kinda stuff." She rolled her closed eyes. "Well, it  _ was  _ like that. Who even  _ knows  _ what it's gonna be like now."

"You mean with Ruby and Weiss getting together?"

Yang debated leaving the assumption where it was… but…

_ No secrets. _

" _ Kinda,  _ but as of last night it's way more complicated than that."

"Oh?" Surprise colored Pyrrha's voice.

"It's nothing bad," Yang started, uncertain where exactly she was going with this. The high of the fight was fading, but she still felt a little dizzy with it. "It's good, actually. Impossibly good."

"Well, now I  _ have  _ to know," Pyrrha said. She shifted, and Yang opened her eyes to find the Vincible Girl turned her way, looking at her across the mat. For a moment, she imagined they were in bed together again, but that passed.

Yang sighed, turning her eyes back to the roof. "So… don't spread this too far, yeah? It's not a  _ secret,  _ but… you'll understand when I tell you."

"Mhmm."

"So… last night…" Yang chuckled. "Man, I can't even figure out where to start." She thought back, to Weiss's starry dress, to flirtations, to art, to stories, to truth, to the end, to a hungry kiss, the promise of many more in the air.

Eventually she found the words, and told the story.

It took a while, and the narrative rambled a bit, but Pyrrha was patient, and interested, and open. And it was a good story, as far as Yang was concerned. She was certainly smiling by the end.

"So basically," she said, throwing her arms to the blocked-off sky. "Blake and Weiss are anxious little sweethearts, Rubes is about an order of magnitude more devious than I gave her credit for, and everyone lived happily ever after." She let herself grin. "Well, lived happily for the rest of the night and the following morning, at least. Honestly it feels like we packed ten months into the last forty-eight hours."

"I can imagine," Pyrrha said. Her smile was bright and warm. "I'm really happy for you, Yang. That's honestly incredible."

"Haha, yeah, it is, innit?" Yang grinned, sheepish and a little giddy. "It's a lot to adjust to overnight. I'm still kinda… I think I'm still not fully processing it yet. Like, I barely even got my head around Ruby and Weiss being a thing, and now  _ this. _ " She shook her head in resignation. "Anyway… thank you for the spar. And for listening. Talking about it is… making it feel more real."

There was a wistful edge to her voice. Pyrrha hummed, seeming to notice it. "That’s a good thing, right?"

"Yeah, yeah…" Yang smiled, feeling a rush of emotion she wasn't sure she could name. "I just kinda, want to run to them and sweep them into my arms, y'know? Even though I've been dating Blake for half a year already, it just… it just feels like we renewed something. Woke up something sleeping?"

"There's probably not a perfect metaphor for it." Pyrrha looked skyward, her smile going somewhere far away. "I… I don't know if I ever told you, but it made me very happy when you and Blake got together. This… it's the same, but even more. I'm so happy that you're happy."

Yang turned to face her, smiling gently. "I think you've told me," she said. "But thank you anyway. And hey, not sure if  _ I  _ ever actually said this, but I'm glad Jaune finally noticed you pining for him. You two are good together."

"Thank you…" Pyrrha sighed. "...I was worried, you know? I know it's silly, but I've always felt bad about how… how we broke things off."

"Yeah?" Yang sat up, surprised. "Why?"

"Just…" Pyrrha stayed prone, looking up at nothing. "It was nice. It really was, and I sort of wish I'd been better at… anything."

"You were  _ fine,"  _ Yang said. She shifted closer, offering an arm. Pyrrha shifted into it, snuggling up beside her. "We had a good time," Yang continued, "but you're more straight than gay, and neither of us is the kind of emotional support the other really needs. Neither of us messed it up. If anything, we did a good job breaking it off and not hurting each other more than we did."

The last sentence had an edge to it that she hadn't planned, and she winced when she realized why. But the words were out, and there wasn't anything Yang could do to take them back.

It seemed like Pyrrha wanted to say something, but she stopped herself, measuring herself carefully. "I'm… sorry, for yesterday," she said. "I… I wish I could just explain what happened, but…" she swallowed, and Yang looked into her eyes and saw the  _ last  _ thing she'd expected.

_ Terror. _

"Pyr…" Yang moved without thinking, pulling her friend into a tight hug. She held the invincible girl until she broke, sobs rolling her body, her hands clamping around Yang's back. "You can talk to me," Yang said, brushing her hair. "Whenever you're ready."

Pyrrha laughed. "You don't even know what's wrong."

Yang rolled her eyes. "No kidding. But it's not about me, is it? Yesterday, that wasn't you being angry at  _ me _ ." It was obvious in hindsight, really. The rest of Pyrrha's team wouldn't have rushed her out of the room for getting a little pissy. "This is something  _ big _ , isn't it?"

Pyrrha nodded. "So much bigger than you think," she whispered, her voice weak.

"Well, you shouldn't be bearing it alone. And neither should your team. Spread the weight." Yang squeezed her tight, then let her go.

Pyrrha clung on a moment longer. Yang didn't push her away, waiting patiently. Eventually, Pyrrha let her go.

"Jaune said you guys would tell us today," Yang said, once Pyrrha had recovered enough to look her in the eye. "But if it takes longer than that, don't sweat it too much, okay? I'll be there when you're ready. We all will."

Pyrrha nodded, blinking tears out of her brilliant eyes. "You're good at this," she said with the faintest smirk. "Your girlfriends are lucky."

Yang cracked her own grin. "You better believe it," she said. Her voice softened. "And hey, just because we're not dating doesn't mean we're not still  _ friends. _ You wanna talk, just ask me. Okay?"

Pyrrha nodded, her smile signaling everything else that needed saying.

Yang smiled right on back. "Wanna go for another round?"

Pyrrha laughed, stepping back into a fighting stance. "Absolutely."

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey wow an actual fight scene! Only took us... 22 chapters to get here! Disclaimer: I am not a martial artist.
> 
> Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil and SeventeenFables for looking over this one! And thanks to all of you for reading!


	6. Unity

Nora lay back on her bed and stared at nothing, her face tugged into a scowl.

Last night had been… stressful.

_ "Pyrrha… was that…?" _

_ "I'm sorry." A voice that shook so hard it was hardly familiar anymore, entwined with equal parts nausea and dread. "I… don't think we can s-stop it anymore. Oh  _ ** _gods, _ ** _ I felt like a  _ ** _spectator _ ** _ inside my own head…" _

…

_ "We have to tell Ozpin. We can't handle this on our own!" _

_ "NO!" She was angry, so angry it sparked under her skin, sizzling nerve endings. "Jaune, this is  _ ** _our _ ** _ business.  _ ** _Pyrrha's _ ** _ business. He's the one who forced her into this to begin with! We don't  _ ** _owe _ ** _ him our trust, and he sure hasn't earned it with all his 'mneh mneh greater good' shit-baloney!" _

_ Then, a hand on her shoulder. The faint touch of calm, drawing her down, grounding the lightning. _

_ "Enough, both of you. You're right, Nora. This is Pyrrha's decision to make. Not Jaune's. And not  _ ** _yours _ ** _ either." _

…

_ A voice in the dark, after all the arguing, worrying, and general stress had worn them out and driven them to an early sleep. _

_ "I want to tell team RWBY everything. Not just about…  _ ** _her, _ ** _ but the rest of it to. I… I want them to know what the stakes are. What we're all up against. They deserve to know." _

_ … _

_ And then they'd woken up, and  _ ** _she'd _ ** _ been there. The girl who wasn't Pyrrha. _

_ "Good morning to you too." _

Nora sighed, kicking her legs frustratedly against the mattress. This wasn't fair. Not to team JNPR, but  _ especially  _ not to Pyrrha. She's just wanted to be treated like a normal girl, and now she'd never get to be normal again, all because a certain stupid old man decided to coerce a bunch of  _ kids  _ into taking care of  _ his _ problems!

It all made Nora want to hit something.  _ Hard. _

The faint scent of heaven drew her out of her ruminations. Sounds spilled from the kitchen, the clink and clatter of measuring cups and pans, Ren working his beautiful magic. It was familiar, grounding, and Nora sighed, the anger ebbing away a bit. Today was just another morning, after all.

Even if they were about to read four of their friends in on one of the biggest, scariest secrets in the world, and nothing at all was fair.

With a huff, Nora glanced around for something else to distract her, and quickly found her mark.

Jaune sat on the end of the same bed Nora'd laid out on (it was his, not that she discriminated much when it came to floppin'). He was still staring at his scroll, one hand mussing his shaggy hair as the other hovered over the send button like it might bite his finger off.

Nora had to suppress a giggle, even though the moment weighed on her too. For someone so good at coming up with big plans, their glorious leader sure did get stuck on the small stuff when it came to his friends.

Impulsively, she sat up and scooted a little closer, before hugging him from behind, threading her arms under his. He was surprisingly muscly considering the kinda guy he'd been when she met him, but some of his noodly energy still remained. She liked it, to be honest.

Jaune jumped halfway out of his skin at the contact. "N-Nora?" Then, he noticed the hands under his arms darting towards his scroll, and quickly lifted it over his head. "Nora, knock it off!"

"You worry too much," Nora shot back hypocritically, turning the hug into an actual hug for a sec before sitting back with her arms crossed. He glared at her, and she stuck her tongue out to match.

Jaune broke first, shoulders falling with a tired sigh. "I just… I'm not sure this is a good idea. They're not  _ ready  _ for this. I know you don't trust him, but I  _ still  _ think we should tell Ozpin that we're bringing them in."

"We had this exact conversation half an hour ago!" Ren's dry voice called from the kitchen. "And yesterday!"

"Mhm!" Nora beamed. She imagined herself hi-fiving her boyfriend. "Plus, it's ultimately  _ Pyrrha's  _ decision, right? She's the one with the big secret." She let a little sharpness flicker into her smile. "Fuck what Ozpin thinks! If he doesn't like who Pyrrha tells  _ her  _ story to? She crossed her arms, petulantly puffing up her cheeks. "Well, maybe  _ I  _ don't like that he's got two intact kneecaps."

Jaune chuckled faintly. "Please don't kneecap the headmaster," he sighed. Still, he was smiling and he looked a little steadier at least, so Nora counted it as a win.

He shifted back to his scroll, screwed up his face, and sent the message out into the world. A split-second later, Nora's scroll buzzed.

**Team RRAYNNBW Groupchat**

**4/7/825 at 10:12 A.M.**

**NoodleBoy: Hey guys! About that thing. We're ready to talk about it, if you're up to it. We're in our dorm.**

Nora rolled her eyes. It didn't have to be  _ quite  _ so serious, and besides, Jaune was missing the most important part. She corrected the oversight:

**ForkInTheMicrowave: we got RENCAAAAAKES!**

The response was immediate.

**GunscytheGirl: O-O** ****  
**GunscytheGirl: RENCAKES!!!** ****  
**BigYang: hell yeah** **  
** **BigYang: ran into pyr at the gym. gotta drop like 40 books off at our dorm for secret reasons. well see u in like 30 seconds**

Nora's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Then she shrugged. "Well, that'll save time."

"Guess so," Jaune responded, sounding uncertain.

And then Nora discovered something magical.

**WeissCream: Ruby, Blake, and myself will be along shortly as well. Ruby first, if the petals in my hair are any indication.** ****  
**ForkInTheMicrowave: awesome! also OMG WEISS YOUR NAME** ****  
**NinjaOfLove69: Such is life.** **  
** **ForkInTheMicrowave: OMGGGGGGGG WHAT HAPPENED**

Nora nearly fell off the bed laughing, utterly ignoring the nonplussed look Jaune was shooting her way. "WEISS CREAM!" she shouted.

"Is… it really that funny?" Jaune glanced between her and the screen, his smirk belying his straight-man attitude. "I mean it's just a pun."

"JAUNE." Nora shot to her feet, grabbing his shoulders as she struggled to convey to him the full scale of the situation. "Jaune, that's  _ Weiss!" _

"…Yeah? I mean, I got  _ that _ —"

"When have you ever heard  _ Weiss  _ make a pun like that!?"

Jaune blinked. "I… I guess never? I dunno. It's…" he flushed "a little risqué for her."

"EXACTLY." Nora pounded her fist into her palm. "And Blake's  _ never  _ changed her screen name once in the whole time we've known her. One of them could just be a coincidence, but  _ both at once? _ Something  _ happened!" _

Jaune appeared nonplussed by her flawless logic. "…Like what?"

"I don't know!" Nora giggled. "But if I had to guess…" She pondered for a hot second. "Blake and Weiss are dating!" 

You could have paved a driveway with the stare Jaune gave her. "Nora, Blake's been with Yang since last year, and Ruby and Weiss got together  _ yesterday."  _ He shook his head. "No way."

They were stopped from further intelligent discourse by the sound of the door opening. "We heard yelling," Pyrrha said, peering at the two of them curiously. "Is everything alright?"

"PYRRHA!" Nora shot to her feet. "Is Yang with you?"

"Nope," Yang said, walking through the door behind Pyrrha. "Yang is in Atlas on a fishing trip."

"Oh nooooo!" Nora slumped to her knees in mock horror. "Then, I can't ask her why her teammates both changed their screen names at the same time even though that's super unlikely and highly suspicious!"

Yang's eyebrows shot up, and she cracked a wicked grin. "Yeah, gee, that sure  _ is  _ a mystery, ain't it? Wonder how that happened?"

Jaune rolled his eyes. "C'mon Yang _ . Nothing  _ weird happened last night, right? They just  _ decided  _ to change their names, because that's a normal thing that people do sometimes. Seriously, it's  _ really  _ easy! Nora managed to change mine yesterday without even unlocking my phone," his eyes narrowed, "…somehow."

Yang shrugged nonchalantly, shooting a wink at Nora, who was bouncing up and down with raw excitement. "Dunno. Yang's in Atlas. Guess you'll just have to ask Weiss and Blake when they get here. But  _ first. _ "

Yang stepped out of the doorframe, and started tapping her foot.

"Any… second… now…"

"…rennnnnncaaAAAA **AAKES!!!"**

Yang nodded resolutely, and snapped her hand out just as a crimson blur rushed into the room. "Yoink!"

"AUGHALBHAGHALA!" Ruby flailed, petals splaying every which way as she tried to figure out what had stopped her pursuit. After a moment, she fell limp, hanging from her shirt collar like a naughty kitten. "Yaaaaaaaaang!"

"No disturbing the chef, sis."

"Thank you!" Ren called from the kitchen.

"Hey Ruby," Jaune waved, looking thoroughly nonplussed with all the silliness.

Ruby smiled, waving from where Yang was still holding her a solid six inches above the floor. "Hi Jaune!"

"RUBY!" Nora bolted up to her, grinning ear-to-ear. "You're in Vale! What happened to Blake and Weiss last night!"

Ruby blinked. Her cheeks pinked. "Uh, well, that's, um. Yes! That is. Um?"

Yang winked. "You gonna tell them, sis?"

"Why don't  _ you  _ do it?" Ruby hissed, glancing back at Nora with a frantic grin. "Um, well, I, that's. You see…"

Jaune's eyes bugged out as it struck him that yes, there actually  _ was  _ some kind of secret behind all of this. Off to the side, Pyrrha chuckled into her hand. "Yang already told me," she said, offering Ruby a shining smile. "Congratulations, to all of you."

Ruby managed to go even redder. "Aw, shucks, thanks Pyrrha!"

Nora glanced between them all, her grin growing more and more. "Oh my  _ gods," _ she tittered. "Wait, wait, no way. You guys  _ didn't. _ "

"Who did what?" Blake asked, stepping through the doorway.

"Indeed." Weiss followed half a step behind. "We could hear you hollering halfway across the building, Nora. Good morning by the way."

They were  _ holding hands. _

Nora couldn't take it anymore, and all of the energy exploded out of her at once. "ALL OF YOU ARE DATING!" she declared.

Silence reigned, all eyes on her. The expressions ranged widely. From amusement from Yang and Pyrrha, to surprise and confusion from Blake and Weiss, to outright flustered embarrassment from Ruby, down to shock and dawning horror from Jaune.

"Nora!" he hissed, shooting a pointed pair of glances at Ruby and Yang. "Too far!"

"Oh, sorry!" Nora clapped a hand to her mouth. "I didn't mean, uh, sorry!" she fidgeted. "But, it's just, you changed your screen names and I—"

Weiss held up a hand, the free one. " _ How _ ." she said. "Wait, no, Yang, did you—?"

"Nope." Yang grinned. "Wasn't Rubes either."

"That's… terrifying," Blake muttered, staring at Nora like she'd never seen her before. "And, just because we changed our screen names?"

"Yeah," Ruby wiggled out of Yang's grasp, landing on the floor in a dignified crouch. "I think Nora's just an actual genius?"

Nora's mouth dropped open. "What. Wait, you  _ actually…" _

"Minus one axis!" Ruby protested from behind the hands she'd used to hide her face. "But uh. Yes."

Nora pumped a fist in victory. "WHOOP! NORA WINS!"

Jaune squinted, like he'd just seen something on the horizon and wasn't quite sure if it was the mast of a ship or a the world's driest sand dune. "How did…" Then, he shook his head. "Y'know what? I'm not even going to try." He looked up, smiling at the four girls. "Congrats, guys! When did this happen?"

"Last night," Yang shrugged. "It's how we got them to change their screen names."

Jaune's eyes bugged out again, his capacity for speech thoroughly obliterated. Ren saved him from having to try by poking his head out of the kitchen.

"Congratulations," he said. "Are there any toppings or fillings each of you would prefer?"

Yang thumbed her chin. "Brown sugar?"

Weiss smiled politely. "Blueberries if you don't mind."

Blake shrugged. "Chef's choice?"

"Strawberries!!!" Ruby cheered. "And banana slices! Please? Thank you!"

Ren squinted as if locking this all into his head, before nodding slowly. "As you like it," he said, and ducked back into the kitchen. "If you'd like plain pancakes to start with, the first batch are done. Jaune, Pyrrha, Nora—"

He didn't need to give any more instruction. Nora was off like a gunshot, and Ruby was close behind. Jaune and Pyrrha followed shortly, while the rest of team RWBY elected to try patience.

Ren was already back in his groove, two pans on the burners to keep production at full speed. He'd set plates out for each of them, stacked three-high with their personalized pancakes. Nora snagged hers immediately—gazing hungrily at the ocean of syrup they were marinating in. Ren had learned her ways long ago—the others had plates, but her pancakes were sitting in a pasta bowl. She giggled, a little flutter in her chest as she leaned in to give the boy a quick smooch on the cheek before zipping off to give him space again.

She sat down on Jaune and Pyrrha's bed, smirking at Weiss, Blake, and Yang all sitting conspicuously close together on her and Ren's.

Things were still unfair. The world was still a big, mean, scary place. But at least somewhere, somehow,  _ something  _ seemed to have gone right for once.

The others, sans-Ren, returned from the kitchen shortly after her. Ruby came bearing a plate full of plain pancakes and a bottle of syrup, along with a quartet of forks which she enthusiastically offered to her teammates. Yang took the opportunity to get a big syrupy corner for herself, while Weiss settled for a smaller portion.

Blake just held up her hands when Ruby offered her a utensil of her own. "I'm fine," she said. "The plate's not big enough for all of us, I'll wait for Ren to finish."

Ruby tilted her head. "Oh," she said. Then, with a motion that was almost too fast to follow, she quickly and delicately cut out a little slice. "You sure?" she said, holding it up.

"Positive." Blake smiled affectionately.

"Even if—" Ruby held the fork out, up to Blake's lips.

Blake's stared blankly at the small triangle of fluffy goodness. "Um," she said.

"Shmoove, Rubes," Yang chuckled through her mouthful.

Weiss elbowed her.  _ "Manners,  _ lout," she teased.

"Oh donf starf wif me," Yang said, turning to face Weiss. "I  _ will  _ kiff you on the mouf."

Weiss gave Yang an appraising stare. "You  _ don't  _ want that," she said.

Yang took a second to ponder that, then swallowed her food decisively. "Yeah, not really. Ew. Pancakes are great though."

Nora giggled, unable to contain herself any longer. "You guys are cute."

It earned her a bemused look from Weiss, a grin from Yang, and an embarrassed giggle from Ruby. Blake just raised an eyebrow, and as if taking it as a challenge, leaned forward to nip the pancake off Ruby's fork. She chewed, swallowed, and said, "Thank you."

Nora giggled harder, sparks popping off in her heart as she wiggled with sheer excitement. "Okay okay okay but HOW DID THIS HAPPEN."

"Nora…" Jaune started, then paused. "Y'know what? No, actually, I'm really, really curious too. I know we didn't see each other for most of the day, but uh… how  _ did  _ this happen?"

"We went for a double date." Yang shrugged. "It went  _ really  _ well."

Blake suppressed a snort of laughter. "She's not  _ wrong. _ Things were a  _ little  _ more complicated than that, though."

"Turns out we've all had crushes on each other for a while," Ruby said, smiling cheekily as she plopped herself down between Blake and Weiss. "So anyway we started flirting, and it kiiiinda got out of hand, and then I got emotional and said a silly thing that wasn't actually a big deal I guess but with all the pressure it like, shattered the glass ceiling? Except, we didn't get cut by the shards so that's not the best metaphor maybe  _ ANYWAY  _ then we had a big talk about our feelings and stuff and I guess we're all girlfriends now."

"Wait, Ruby,  _ you _ started it?" Nora let out a delighted gasp, looking on her rosy friend with newfound respect. "Wow! Who knew  _ you'd  _ turn out to be such a player!"

Ruby flushed, and Yang got a distinctly murdery look in her eyes for a hot second.

Then, Ruby giggled. "Well, y'know," she tittered. "I mean, two days ago I was freaking out because I thought Weiss would hate me if I asked her out. So, I'm doing  _ great  _ right now, honestly."

Ren emerged, carrying the next tray of pancakes. "You do seem to have moved  _ very  _ quickly," he noted, setting the tray down on the nightstand and passing out the plates to their respective owners. "Be careful with one another."

"We will," Weiss nodded firmly, taking her plate with a resolute smile. She made to set it in her lap, but abruptly stopped herself as a head landed there instead.

She shot a ruffled scowl down at Ruby, who had apparently decided that horizontal was her new favorite axis. "You almost got syrup in your cute hair! Be more careful."

Ruby stuck out her tongue. "Nyeh!"

" _ Plus _ , I can't eat my pancakes like this," Weiss deadpanned. "And neither can you."

Ruby shrugged, a motion that rumpled Weiss's skirt a little. "Guess we'll just starve."

Disbelief took over Weiss's face. Blake let out a choked laugh through her pancake.

Yang… didn't respond. She wasn't looking at her teammates at all, a frown on her face. "Pyrrha?" she said, gently. "You ok?"

"Mm." Pyrrha mumbled. She hadn't touched her pancakes. "Sorry, I'm just… thinking about things."

Jaune had an arm around her shoulders, and pulled her to him gently. "It's okay if you aren't ready to talk about it," he said, softly enough that Team RWBY probably couldn't hear the specific words.

Still, it drew their attention. Ruby sat up, and Weiss set her plate on her lap, leaving it be for now.

Nora felt herself growing antsy, and felt Ren's hand on hers as well, steadying her. The quiet hum of his semblance touched her—not working on her yet, but present, just across the line between their auras. Ready to help, the moment she needed it.

She scooted up to Pyrrha's shoulder, letting that spooky fuzziness arc across her skin to reach the taller girl. "We're all here for you," she said, trying to make sure every ounce of sincerity in her heart made it into those words.

Pyrrha nodded, and shot a shy smile across the aisle. "Sorry, I didn't mean to change the subject."

"It's okay!" Ruby insisted, leaning forward, hands on her knees. "It's why we're here. If there's anything we can do, we wanna help. So like… whenever you're ready."

The rest of the team nodded. It filled Nora's chest with warmth, and seemed to steady Pyrrha a little too.

There was a long moment, then, where they sat in silence as Pyrrha gathered her words. Touching her, with Ren's semblance linking them all faintly, Nora could feel the faintest rhythm coursing through her aura. It was an odd side-effect of Ren's power—she could only sorta tell what the patterns meant, but apparently Ren could use it to read someone's surface emotions. If he knew them well, at least. 

Pyrrha's patterns were fuzzy and frantic at the moment. Which… was kinda understandable, really.

"Before I tell you this…" Pyrrha started, looking up through her bangs, her eyes wide and serious. "You should know that this is bigger than me. Bigger than all eight of us. Bigger than  _ Beacon. _ " She swallowed, and a little  _ twang  _ shot through her aura. "Knowing about it may even put your lives in danger. I just want to make that explicit before I start."

Team RWBY looked at each other in shock. A nonverbal conversation took place, a chorus of check-ins and confirmations flying between them too fast for their friends to parse out.

After a moment, Ruby turned her silver eyes on Pyrrha. "We're your friends," she said. "Whatever this is, however big it is… you're already dealing with it, right?"

Pyrrha nodded. 

"Then we wanna help." Ruby said, firm and final.

"Alright." Pyrrha shut her eyes, taking one last moment to collect herself. Her hand drifted, and with a faint giggle Nora took it, squeezing it in solidarity. The pattern of Pyrrha's soul pulsed hard for a second, and then softened, slowed, into a firm and steady rhythm.

Nora sighed, finding her own relief in the sensation. Without thinking, she let her head drift down to Pyrrha's shoulder, smiling as she felt Ren slide in close beside her, felt the faint echo as Jaune took Pyrrha's other hand and joined their little circuit. If she noticed the odd and/or knowing looks team RWBY was shooting her way, she didn't acknowledge them. It wasn't like they had any right to judge.

Yeah, things were still unfair but with all of them united, all of them working together… maybe everything really would be okay?

Pyrrha took a deep breath. "Then… I'll start from the very beginning," she said. She smiled, looked up again, and her eyes flashed bright.

"What's your favorite fairy tale?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooop! A shorter chapter than the last two but a fun one I hope! Tune in soon for an explanation, and for the divergence point for this whole AU!
> 
> Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis, and SeventeenFables for being excellent betas as always! And special thanks to @ickyickyvic (on twitter) for letting me dramatic-read the chapters to him before I post! It is a weird but unbelievably useful exercise, and it's only right that he gets credit too!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and see yins again soon!


	7. Destiny

** _November 9th, 823 VCS_ **

** _Eighteen months ago._ **

* * *

Tears hung in the rim of Pyrrha's vision. She blinked them away, only for them to return. She couldn't escape her own feelings anymore than she could escape the choice that lay before her.

"I've always felt as though I was destined to become a huntress," she said, choosing her words carefully. "To protect the world…" She sighed. "And it's become increasingly clear to me that my feelings were right, but…"

She thought of the dying girl in the depths below them now, the face pinched in silent agony, frozen by awful science as death approached on silent feet. She thought of letting such incredible powers fall into the hands of a murderer, or into her own hands. She thought of the looks on the faces of Ozpin's inner circle—the stress lines, the tired eyes. She thought of why they'd chosen her, of how even those in command of the world still saw her as a list of her achievements.

She thought of saying yes. She thought of saying no.

_ "Her life would become intertwined with yours, the only question is…" _

_ "…What's that gonna do to you?" _

She thought of choice, and of consequence.

"…I don't know if I can do it."

Jaune stood. She heard him take a breath as if to speak, and started to turn and face him.

But then he paused, just a moment, and thought about his words a little more.

"I think you can," he said. She stiffened, feeling a familiar lash of anxiety, but then she whirled on him and saw his arms outstretched, a worried smile on his face.

"But… I don't know if you _ should," _ Jaune said, taking a step closer. "Pyrrha… I have _ no _ idea what's going on. You're talking about destiny, and _ losing yourself, _and I don't know what any of that means! I can't see inside your head, but… I don't want to lose you. So…" He swallowed, desperation in his eyes, and gently placed his hands on her shoulders, as if terrified she'd shatter.

"So, please," he said. "Just talk to me? Tell me what's going on. After everything you've done for me, let me return the favor. Please?"

She looked at him. She saw the worry in his eyes, and something in her broke. She took a step forward, and he met her, pulling her into his arms as she began to sob, holding onto him for dear life as the world seemed to spin itself down around her. The two of them fell to their knees at some point, but it hardly mattered. She buried her face in his neck, hiding there, holding onto him like the last safe place in the world.

She felt his hand, hesitantly, rise to stroke her hair. She felt him swallow, nervous and scared, but not because she was powerful, or famous, or out of his reach.

"It'll be okay," he said.

She grit her teeth. "And what if it's not?"

"Then we'll make it okay! You and me, Ren and Nora, team RWBY, everyone else! Whatever this is about, the one thing I can promise is that you won't have to face it alone."

She laughed. "Do you know how rare it is for someone to offer me help?"

"Yeah. But it's still okay to ask." He pulled back, and his smile shined. "You taught me that, Pyrrha."

She looked at him, and for just a moment, she believed him.

* * *

She didn't tell him everything, but she told him enough to understand. 

Qrow spat out his liquor when she brought Jaune to Ozpin's office. Ironwood tried to lecture her on 'opsec,' on _ trust _. She stared him down without hesitation and clearly laid out her terms: She would do this, but it wouldn't be alone. Jaune would be there, and her team would be informed afterwards.

Ironwood steamed. Qrow and Glynda looked to one another.

Ozpin agreed.

Neither she nor Jaune said a word as they descended. They didn't talk much more as they walked down the long, dark hallway of the vault. The only thing of substance Jaune asked was "is it safe?" to which Ironwood replied "yes" and Qrow replied "not even a little."

Jaune gasped when he saw Amber, but didn't comment, hiding his horror with a hand across his mouth. He looked to Pyrrha, and found her gazing at the pod with a powerful determination.

As she stood before the device that would remake her, Pyrrha made more decisions. Most of them weren't relevant now. Things for the future. She only made two choices for that moment.

The first was to say she was ready.

The second was to turn to Jaune, look him in the eyes in what might have been the last moment of her life, and kiss him.

And then it began.

* * *

Cinder was reclining casually, studying the student records of Team CMSN's "competitors" and half-listening to some stupid argument between her two accomplices, when the power inside her body began to _ writhe. _

It came on quick; a wave of dizziness, a spurt of nauseous confusion, and then a feeling so hot and hideous it obliterated all thought from the woman's mind. 

Cinder staggered to her feet, and without speaking to either of her charges, _ ran. _ Whatever was happening, she had minutes to stop it, at most.

* * *

Pyrrha screamed as the dying girl's life poured into hers.

It was like standing in a blast furnace, bathing in molten iron. All the heat, and all the weight as well. She could feel it tugging at her in some kind of strange confusion, trying to reshape her into the body it knew.

She could feel her own aura resisting it. Fighting bitterly against the pull. Even as this alien soul tried to change her, she devoured it, tearing pieces of it away and taking them into herself. And at the core, the reason for it all. The glowing kernel of power that burned hotter than all the rest.

She took it, and two became one.

* * *

Cinder tore up the stairs from the basement, and burst through the doors of the disused warehouse on the edge of Beacon's campus. It was early evening, and the student body was milling around in their usual mundane chaos. Cinder rushed through them like a missile, injecting more and more aura into her limbs to push her body past its limits, ignoring the yelps and shouts as she knocked a girl right off her feet.

She could feel the source, a point that some unconscious part of her was desperately repelled from, while another was brutally attracted. The duality wrenched at her mind. Dimly, she recognized that she'd blown her cover, but that likely didn't matter anymore.

There was only one explanation for what she was feeling: Ozpin was doing _ something _to the maiden's corpse. It didn't surprise her that he'd defile the girl—a man with that much power couldn't possibly have all the compunctions he put on for the public—but she hadn't expected him to make the move before the end of the festival, with every camera in the world still squatting on his lawn.

In any case, time was short. If Cinder could feel where the other half of the power was, it stood to reason that whoever had it could feel _ her _just the same. The plan was as good as ruined; no sense in waiting around for things to slide further out of her control.

She turned a corner, ignoring the startled shriek as she crashed through a vaguely familiar quartet of students who failed to get out of her way. Two of them, a big man carrying a sword to match and some diva with a beret, lashed out to grab her. With a flick of her wrist, she scorched their hands and carried on.

The CCT tower lay ahead. The dual repulsion/attraction was fading, but Cinder could still locate the source—deep underground, a ways off.

She almost ran to the spot above it, but a moment of lucidity struck her. She sprinted to the tower, into the lobby, and into an open elevator car. Some big brawny idiot was standing there already, so she grabbed him by the chestpiece and hurled him bodily back outside. Shouts were beginning to echo from the lobby, so she lifted her scroll and triggered Arthur's virus.

The elevator doors slammed shut, and she examined the controls. Her scroll beeped, alerting her that there were hidden functions it could access. Including a floor far below where she stood now.

She snarled, and nearly stumbled as she sent the car down.

* * *

The girl stumbled out of the pod. The world lurched, each sound a scream in her ear, each point of light a spear running through her optic nerve. She shut her eyes, tried to just stand still.

She failed, her knees giving out as she pitched forward. Someone caught her, strong hands holding her, a familiar voice asking if she was alright. They said a name. They called her "Pyrrha."

It was her name.  
_ It was not her name. _

She threw up.

"P-Pyrrha!?"

The shock and concern in the voice startled her, and she looked up, in a haze.

He was familiar, but she couldn't put a name to him. She felt sick. She knew him. She _ knew _she knew him. He was important to her. Who was he?

She swallowed the burning in her throat. Tasted bile. She'd thrown up all over his cuirass. She tried to speak, but her mouth wouldn't work. She looked up, into his eyes. Terror and worry gazed back, tinted blue.

She tried to steady her breathing. She swallowed again. She opened her mouth, then coughed, feeling another wave of nausea.

His name. What was his _ name. _

"Pyrrha?"

"J-" She swallowed a third time, shutting her eyes tight, forcing herself to remember. "J-Jaune. It's Jaune, right?"

He hugged her to him, pulling her tight. "It's me," he said, his voice breaking with tears. "It's Jaune. I'm here, Pyrrha."

That name.

"Pyr… Pyrrha. That's me, right?"

The voice was so quiet, echoing in the dark space.

It was her voice.  
_ It was not her voice. _

"That's right," someone else said. She turned her head, and her blood froze in her veins.

_ "Ozpin." _

The venom in her throat surprised her, but she was too angry to care much. She tore herself away from Jaune and stalked towards the wizard. She stumbled, caught herself, then stood. Fists clenched tight. She was taller than him—had she always been taller than him?

Her eyes hardened and her lips twisted into an unkind smile. It felt wrong, an expression that her face had never taken on before. "It's been a while."

Ozpin regarded her levelly. "Amber."

_ It was her name. _  
It was not her name.

She felt sick again, but this time she managed not to throw up. "What," she said, gritting out each syllable, "did you do to me."

It was her voice.  
_ It was not her voice. _

"Something that's never been done before. A miracle." Another voice. Also familiar. She turned to him, the fury in her eyes only growing. _ Ironwood. _

"You," she said, quaking with rising fury. "What have you _ done. _"

Ironwood's gaze was unyielding. "We saved your life."

"For a certain definition of 'saved,'" said another.

Her lips twitched up, seeing the old drunk leaning against the wall behind the general. A little of the anger faded for a moment. "Qrow… I'd like to say it's nice to see you again…"

"And _ I'd _ say it was mutual, but ah…" Qrow's eyebrows raised. "I can't say this is exactly ideal."

"You were attacked," Goodwitch cut in, standing off to the side with her arms sharply folded. "How much do you remember?"

She did not remember.  
_ She remembered. She remembered bullets, and fire. The little girl on the road, a trap. She remembered battle. Remembered the fear in those red eyes as she prepared to finish off her foe. Then pain. Then defeat. Then _ ** _HER._ **

** _The Woman In Red._ **

She hissed as the pain in her head overwhelmed her, dizziness rushing to claim her. She fell backwards, and someone caught her. She smelled vomit. She felt sick.

"Pyrrha! What's wrong with her, what did you _ do!?" _

She looked up at the familiar/_ unfamiliar _boy.

"...who the hell is Pyrrha?"

He stared at her like she'd slapped him, horror tightening his hands on her shoulders.

The sickness exploded inside her, and she ripped herself away from him, falling on her knees as she retched onto the tiles.

"Jaune," she gasped. "I… I'm so sorry, I…" She felt tears rising, falling down her face.

He was at her side, holding her, pulling her up, supporting her. She leaned on him, pressed into him, held him and let him hold her.

Her name was Pyrrha Nikos.  
_ Her name was Amber Autumn. _

And then, she heard the click of heels.

* * *

The car reached the bottom. The door opened with a little "ding."

Cinder's heels clicked on the floor of the dark vault. The nausea was subsiding, but something new was taking its place. An apprehension she was not accustomed to.

She cursed herself for her own carelessness. The vault was obvious in hindsight; she should have looked for it earlier, at _ least _ confirmed its location. She could have even slipped in and killed the maiden months ago, drained the last of the power in the night and vanished. It would have made everything else so utterly, trivially simple.

But it was too late now. The apprehension grew and grew, morphing into genuine anxiety, the first she'd felt in years. For an instant, she was back in the stable, listening to the distant sounds of an argument she didn't understand.

She shook herself out of it with a flash of righteous fury. That wasn't who she was anymore. She was strong now, and she'd be stronger still, as soon as…

And then, Cinder saw her.

The girl. Tall, with hair like fire and eyes like… like nothing in the world, a green that seemed to pierce Cinder's soul and hook into it, tugging at the walls of an empty cavity. It was more literal than metaphor. Cinder felt a wriggling pain in her gut just looking at the loathsome child.

For a moment, they just stared. The girl's face turned to shock, then pain, then fear.

Then, abruptly, it was none of those. The girl's face twisted, and she screamed, fire dancing in her eyes as she broke from the boy holding her, lunging towards Cinder with uncanny speed.

So much anger. Cinder could relate.

She raised a hand, and blew the girl back down the hall in a wave of flame.

The others were readying themselves, Ozpin and his tin soldier, his witch, his wine-soaked crow, and some other child who hardly warranted the effort of description. It was the last who'd caught the struggling girl, holding her back as she glared at Cinder with those repugnant eyes. Her face was that of the little champion, but her _ expression _held a different familiarity.

Cinder felt a spark of hatred lodge itself in the wall of her chest. "So that's what you did," she hissed. She almost had to give Ozpin credit—she'd never imagined he was capable of something so utterly cruel.

She didn't wait for them to react. She didn't try to fight. The wizard alone could destroy her, and the rest made it a hopeless endeavor. She'd missed her moment.

She'd failed.

She burned the elevator's doors away, burned its roof, and roared up the shaft on a cone of fire. The lobby exploded around her as she ripped her way through, ignoring the screams of the students and security guards as she set everything ablaze. Some of them still tried to stop her. She set them on fire.

She smashed through the doors, as fire alarms and attack sirens wailed into the evening sky. She ran, out across the grounds, out to the edge of the airship dock and leapt, screaming out her rage as she dove into the cold waters below.

* * *

An hour later, Emerald's scroll buzzed, but she and Mercury had already left Beacon. Their master hadn't been subtle with her exit, and they'd put the pieces together.

They pulled out of Vale entirely the next day, disappearing immediately except for Emerald, who quietly warned Neopolitan that their agreement was off. That night, Roman Torchwick vanished from Atlas military custody without a trace.

Adam Taurus screamed and raged at their betrayal, but in the end even his plans fell apart. Word of his plotting and instability finally made its way back to Mistral. He was recalled soon after, and the White Fang blended back into the shadows.

At Beacon, confusion reigned. Team CMSN's safehouse was found, though their motives for infiltrating and disrupting the tournament were never verified. "Cinder Fall" was no citizen of any major settlement, and investigation of her teammates turned up only two fragments of information; a Mistrali birth certificate that roughly matched up with Emerald's supposed age, and a rumor that the assassin Marcus Black had raised a son before he was killed. Of the quiet girl, known only as "Nix," nothing was ever determined.

Eventually, though, the Vytal Festival Tournament resumed. The singles round was reshuffled, with Yang Xiao Long exonerated and readmitted based on the testimony of several fellow students.

In the end, Pyrrha Nikos would defeat Yang to win the Fortieth Vytal Festival Tournament. The strange, but ultimately inconsequential events of the previous month were soon forgotten, lost in a haze of interviews and celebrations. Visiting students returned to their academies, and the world grew quiet once more.

* * *

Pyrrha Nikos stood in front of Ozpin's desk. There was a chair, but she didn't sit. Her back was rigid, her eyes shut tight. Her shoulders hunched, as she kept herself still.

"Please, relax," Ozpin said gently, concern evident in his voice.

"I can_ feel _ her," Pyrrha said. "She's in pain. She's _ angry. _"

"I imagine she is. She certainly has a right to be. What you both are experiencing is deeply traumatic. Some would call it the stuff of nightmares. Of horror stories."

Pyrrha grimaced.

"...But it is what is, and you _ will _adapt to it, in time."

Suddenly Pyrrha's eyes flew open, her mouth twisting into a snarl. "In _ time? _ She's _ out _ there Oz! I can _ feel _her!"

Ozpin regarded the girl in front of him. "Yes. She is. But we know her face now, the way she fights, who she works with. She won't come here again."

The girl who was not Pyrrha glared out through Pyrrha's eyes. She sat down in the chair, trying to let her muscles unclench. "Losing the maiden powers felt like… like she wrenched open my ribs and took out a pound of flesh. This feels like you reached in for another pound and threw the rest of me away."

"Is it worse than death?"

"Who knows? But it sucks, Ozpin. It's misery."

"I'm sorry."

"You should be."

For the first time in memory, Ozpin's eyes drifted away. "I know."

Amber sighed, following his gaze out to the city of Vale, its lights glimmering across the bay. "This girl… Pyrrha. She deserves better."

"I agree."

"And you still did this to her?"

"Only with her consent. Pyrrha Nikos is a hero in the truest sense of the word. She understands sacrifice."

Amber stared him down. "Did she really understand this one?"

"Perhaps not. But she will, in time. She is stronger than you think."

"She should have her own life," Amber said. She looked out at the city again, the anger in her gaze giving way to a quiet exhaustion. "After today… I'm going to recuse myself. I want to let her continue to be the person she is."

Ozpin's eyes grew weary. "That may work for a time, but it won't forever," he said. His eyes didn't meet hers, his hands clasped together as he regarded them with an age-old sadness. "Sooner or later, you will begin to bleed into her. You may never truly be _ one _person, but two souls cannot exist so close to one another without being changed. She will feel it, even if you refuse to."

Amber closed her eyes.

Ozpin let out a long, slow sigh, looking on the girl with two souls. "Have you asked Pyrrha what _ she _wants?"

"No," Amber said.

Pyrrha opened her eyes.

"She's… gone," she said, stunned. "I can't feel her anymore."

"Not forever. It's not so simple to extinguish a soul. She's simply sealed herself away for a time."

"Why?"

Ozpin smiled, though there wasn't much humor in it. "To give you a chance to grow up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooo! And THAT is our divergence point!
> 
> You might notice that date at the beginning? Not gonna go into it too much, but I've devised a basic timeline for this AU. Year zero is the year Vale was founded, 823 is RWBY's first year at beacon, and 825 is the current year. Will probably keep adding dates to chapter headers as it makes sense to do so. Might even go back and retroactively date everything. Dunno! We will see.
> 
> Thanks to FriendOfYggdrasil and Sgt. Chrysalis for the beta. I don't think SeventeeFables got to it this time, but thanks to her too! And to @Ickyickyvic for letting me dramatic read it to him! Which I guess is just an unconventional beta read actually?
> 
> And thanks to all of you for reading!


	8. Autumn

"…And that brings us to today," Pyrrha finished.

A hollow silence tugged at the walls of JNPR's dorm. The room suddenly seemed too small. Too close. The plates were all set aside—the pancakes either finished or forgotten and left cold. Outside, a faint rumble signalled that perhaps the oncoming rain would be a bit more violent than expected.

Weiss sat beside her girlfriends. Yang had flopped back onto the bed and was staring blankly up at the ceiling, the blinking of her eyes and the way she squeezed Weiss's hand the only signs was still conscious. Ruby, holding her other hand, seemed to be handling the reveal much better, just staring at her knees with her face lost in a distant frown, tracing small circles on Weiss's palm with her thumb.

Blake seemed to be taking it hardest. She'd separated herself from the rest of them, curling up and pressing her forehead to her knees up as she leaned against Nora and Ren's headboard. Her ears lay flat, but she didn't seem to be crying or hyperventilating. Weiss wanted to go hug her, but the fact that Yang wasn't already doing so suggested that Blake probably just needed space right now.

Weiss… wasn't sure how she was doing. She kept trying to make sense of what she'd just heard, but her thoughts just kept looping around and around, unable to join the pieces together no matter how hard she tried. The world felt _ distant, _like she'd stepped out of it and into somewhere else entirely.

She squeezed the hands she held, drawing some small sense of stability from their presence. As she drifted back into herself, she looked across to the other side of the room.

Team JNPR were still pressed together—not that anyone was going to comment on it now. Pyrrha and Jaune seemed… _ exhausted. _Nora still held Pyrrha tight on the other side, while Ren had shifted to softly hug Pyrrha from behind.

Ren must have noticed her staring, because he met Weiss's eyes and offered a wan smile. It communicated a great deal of information that Weiss didn't understand.

It was Ruby's voice which finally cleared the brittle air. "That's… a lot," she said. "But… to _ start _with… Pyrrha. Are you okay?"

Pyrrha laughed hollowly, bowing her head. Nora and Jaune pressed into her sides a little more, while Ren squeezed her tighter. "...Not really, no," she admitted. "But… I agreed to this, and I—"

"Did you?" Yang said, flatly. They all stared at her in shock, as she slowly sat up, her eyes blazing red. Her voice was low, rough. "Because it sounds to me like someone with power fucking coerced you into doing his dirty work."

The words rattled Weiss out of her daze. She blinked, finding Yang gripping her hand so tight it nearly hurt, and squeezed back reassuringly.

Nora let out a dramatic sigh. _ "Thank you, _Yang! See, it's not just me!"

"Yang, Nora…" Jaune shot them unhappy looks, but Pyrrha nudged him into silence.

"They're… not entirely wrong," she said. "But… can we talk about _ that _later, please?" She shifted uncomfortably. "You must have questions."

"One or two," Weiss said, almost without meaning to. She swallowed, composing herself enough to separate some of her questions from her own frantic attempts to answer them with rationality and logic. "So these… maidens," she started, gaze hardening as she locked eyes with Pyrrha, "are women who inherit powers which transcend aura and semblances—actual _ magic. _ And we've never heard of them because there's a great, multinational conspiracy to keep their existence a secret, led by the headmaster of Beacon. And that same headmaster, with the aid of General Ironwood and Ruby and Yang's _ uncle, _ used what I can only describe as _ mad science _ to transfer the soul of the fall maiden out of her dying body and into yours." A pause. "And _ that's _why you snapped at Yang over breakfast yesterday."

Pyrrha gave a slow nod. "It… does sound a little implausible," she said with a nervous smile.

Weiss's eyes hardened further, from steel to gleaming diamond. "Were this coming from anyone else in this room," she said, her voice uncharacteristically low. "I would be _ very _upset at the tastelessness of the joke." She sighed, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead as some of the tension bled out of her. "But… I believe you. You're not the type to fuck with us like that."

Ruby gasped, her eyes lighting up. "Weiss said f—!"

Yang leaned across Weiss and clapped a hand over her sister's mouth automatically. "No swearing."

"MMF!" Ruby protested, flailing wildly at the injustice and throwing Yang's hand off. "That's not fair! You just said it like, thirty seconds ago!"

Weiss smiled fondly at the sisterly squabble happening in her lap, and a little more when Pyrrha giggled softly. _ For all of this, at least some things are the same. _ She shook herself, looking to team JNPR again. "So," she said. "That's the truth?"

"I promise," Pyrrha said. "I… sort of wish I was fucking with you, honestly."

"Pyrrha said it!" Ruby protested. "And it was _ actually _Pyrrha this time!" There was an awkward moment, as Ruby caught up with her own mouth, her face growing pale. "I mean—!"

Pyrrha's face scrunched, but then a laugh ripped itself out of her. It grew and grew as she doubled over, shaking her head. A little of the tension eased off Jaune's shoulders, and Nora grinned and nuzzled into her softly. Ren just continued smiling, closing his eyes as he lowered his head to bump against Nora and Pyrrha's.

Weiss found a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. _ Strange synchronicities. _

"Thank you, Ruby," Pyrrha said, once she'd recovered from her little fit. "I think I need a little humor right now."

Ruby giggled nervously, snapping a crooked salute she probably thought was perfect. "At your service!" she declared. "So, what are your powers like?" She fidgeted adorably. "If you're okay showing us, I think that'd make it a little easier to wrap my head around all of this."

"Well… I'll show you what I can," Pyrrha said. 

She held up a hand, and after a moment of concentration, a faint flame flickered to life on her skin. Her eyes began to glow. "I have very weak control over the power, right now. Amber, when she… manifests, is much stronger."

All eyes peered at the flame in fascination. Ruby made a little murmur in the back of her throat, shock and awe written in her eyes. Yang stared into the fire levelly, her expression thoughtful. Blake even lifted her head, the orange light dancing in her night-eyes.

Weiss reached out hesitantly until she was close enough to feel the very real heat. "You understand the implications of this," she said, tilting her hand around Pyrrha's—testing the way the light and warmth fell on her skin. Her shoulders sagged, as she confirmed it was real. Her head spun, as the tension finally broke, her thoughts fleeing as she finally accepted it all. "…Better than I do, certainly. I have more questions, but they can wait." She then lay back on the bed, curling up into Yang's side, so utterly drained that her words felt forced out of her mouth. "If someone else would like to take over?"

* * *

Yang snickered, wrapping her arm around the adorable little orb of a girl next to her. She stroked Weiss's hair, drawing strength from the quiet hitch in her breathing, the way she unwound herself a little further with each touch. It was grounding, for both of them, and they _ all _needed some grounding right now.

_ Speaking of… _ Yang glanced at Blake, making brief eye contact. She inclined her eyebrow, to which Blake shook her head and raised a hand in a shaky _ need space _gesture.

Blake and Yang processed stress in really different ways. She'd need Yang later—need all of them, probably, but right now Blake needed space to get her thoughts in order. Yang smiled gently at her to show she understood.

She glanced at Ruby, making brief eye contact to make sure her sister was doing okay. Ruby's lips twitched down, and she shook her head a little. Yang pushed back the little spike of worry, and shot her sister an easy smile before refocusing on Pyrrha.

"I'll go next," Yang said, her smile quickly fading as she worked out what she needed to ask. She settled on one of the smaller questions for now. _ Better to get this out of the way early. _ "So… Amber doesn't like me, huh?"

Pyrrha got a distinctly uncomfortable look in her eyes. "She, um…"

Nora waggled her hand. "She's just kinda bitchy, tbh."

"Nora!" Jaune protested. "That… really isn't it."

"Amber has been through a great deal," Ren cut in firmly. Glancing around to make sure he had the floor, he continued. "As much as we're concerned about Pyrrha… it's easy to forget that the reason any of this happened was because a woman was attacked and nearly killed, having a part of her soul stolen from her in the process. Then, she was placed into someone else's body, becoming intimately connected with a complete stranger without her consent." He sighed, shaking his head. "Any one component of this could be a traumatic experience. All together—"

The flame in Pyrrha's hand suddenly _ flared, _ sending strange shadows dancing across the walls. "It fucking _ blows _."

Team RWBY collectively drew back in stunned silence.

Pyrrha's face was set _ wrong. _ Her eyebrows were pinched in anger, her mouth curled in what was almost a snarl. But more obvious than that…

"Your _ eyes, _" Weiss breathed.

The girl blinked, looking back and forth between the rest of team JNPR in confusion. Nora gasped. Jaune stiffened. Ren took a slow breath, flicked out his scroll, and quickly pulled up the camera. He held the screen up, revealing to her what everyone else could see.

The girl who wasn't Pyrrha stared at her own face, at eyes that had once been vivid green.

Now almond brown.

* * *

She stared into Ren's phone. Watched a smile curl on another woman's lips. She took a breath. The first in a while. 

It felt weird to move air into her lungs. Looking into an unfamiliar face and seeing her own eyes mounted there? Weirder.

"Well," she muttered, as anxiety twanged her shoulders. "That'll help keep track, at least."

She looked down from the scroll to the little flame, held in wrong-colored hands. She closed the fist, and the flame vanished. She opened the other hand, and with the smallest flash of will, fire returned. Her throat tightened, and she dispelled the flames entirely before her emotions got the better of her. She'd learned that lesson years ago.

Now that it was safe to be angry, she directed a level glare at Nora. "_ Bitchy?" _she said, raising one eyebrow high. "Really?"

Nora shrugged and met her eyes with steady conviction. "I mean, am I wrong?" she said. "Basically every time we've ever met, you've been mean and snippy, and honestly I get why you're upset at stuff! Your life sucks! But as somebody who's _ trying _ to help, it's getting really frustrating." She crossed her arms sharply. "You've got _ issues _ , girlfriend, and we _ really _need to work on them if we're gonna be living together."

Astonishment reigned, as the girl who wasn't Pyrrha processed being _ served _ so completely by a teenager. She managed to hold Nora's stare for a moment, but eventually gave up. "…You're not wrong," she sighed, pinching her eyes shut. "Fine. I'll be _ nice. _Is that what you want?"

"It's a start!" Nora said. With absolutely no signs of anger or bitterness, she hooked an arm around the girl's back and shoved her spine painfully back into shape. "Now say hi to your new friends."

The insanity of it all was almost funny. Almost made her forget the extent to which she'd been violated to get here.

Still, she had her role to play now. So she sighed, and looked up at the girls across from her. "Well, if I'm here, I guess we're doing this." She managed a glum smile and a halfhearted wave. "Hi. Amber Autumn. Nice to meet'cha."

There was a moment spent processing this. Uncertain expressions, unreadable vibes.

Then, Ruby stood. She crossed the space, and held out her hand. "Ruby Rose," she said.

Amber gave her a flat look, the irritation coming back. "I've been in this girl's head for a year and a half, kid. I know who you are."

"Yes, but we've never _ met," _ Ruby said. Her voice was firm, and the glint of her silver eyes filled Amber with the strangest sense of unease. "So," she said, extending her hand an inch further. "My name is Ruby Rose. And it's nice to meet you too."

It felt absurd to reach out, to grasp the small hand and greet a stranger she already knew. Still, it felt… a little bit reassuring. Even if those eyes were still giving her the jibblies.

Weiss stood, following her leader's example and offering her hand. "Weiss," she said. "Charmed."

Amber took this hand too, giving them both a vexed look. "This is ridiculous," she declared. "But fine. Nice to meet you, Weiss."

With a grunt, Yang stood too, cracking her back and sticking out her hand. "I guess _ we've _technically met, huh?" she said. Her eyes weren't smiling.

Amber swallowed, as flutter of anxiety stirred her. Teenager or no, she did _ not _ wanna fuck with biceps like those "Guess so," she said, trying to play it off. She reached out to Yang's hand, a little more cautiously than with the others. "About yesterday," she said, not expecting to feel quite so much regret. "I've got a tendency to shoot my mouth off. I don't _ actually _hate you."

"No shit?" Yang smiled. She took Amber's hand, then _ squeezed _hard enough to make the joints pop. "We'll work on that then," she said, letting go. "You seem cool, though." The color in her eyes deepened a shade, drawing Amber in sharply. "And, for the record? I'm sorry too. You went through some real fucked up shit to get here. That sucks."

Shock took Amber's face. She struggled for the words, then gave up with a bit of a laugh and a genuine smile. "Thanks," she said.

Not quite sure what to say after that, she quickly redirected her attention to the last member of their little squad. "Guess that just leaves you," she said, throwing out a lazy wave in Blake's general direction. "So… yo."

* * *

Blake looked up levelly, trying to settle the beat of her heart. The sight of someone else wearing Pyrrha's face wasn't the most reassuring thing in the world, but it _ was _outside of her own head, which… yeah, she could use a break.

She offered the best smile she could. "Blake Belladonna," she said. "It's nice to meet you, Amber." 

Amber sat back an inch, her face shifting. "Yeah, same. Uh… you okay?"

Yang, Weiss, and Ruby all gave her worried looks, and Blake just sighed, shaking her head. Her ears twitched low. "I'm just thinking," she said. "It's good to know what's going on with you… with _ both _of you, but…"

"Cinder," Ruby said quietly, finishing the thought.

Blake nodded, her fists clenching as she finally let the anger out. "It was a long time ago now, but… One day they were just some students from Haven, and the biggest thing we knew about them was what happened between Mercury and Yang…"

"Still not my fault," Yang muttered almost reflexively. Weiss gently patted her arm.

"…And the next day, half the grass on the grounds was ash, with a dozen of our classmates were in the burn ward," Blake continued, her voice growing unsteady. "Yatsuhashi and Coco have _ scars _ from where she hurt them. That was upsetting enough, but… Torchwick, the White Fang… they were all part of _ her _ scheme? And when she vanished… that's why White Fang activity suddenly stopped?" Her ears flattened, her fingernails digging into her palms. "None of that makes any sense! If she wanted the maiden powers, why go through the trouble of assembling an army? Why hire Torchwick? Why did Adam…" She cut off, swallowing hard. "I don't understand," she said. "This… this is _ huge." _

Yang moved to sit beside Blake, not touching, but close enough to be a source of comfort if needed. Weiss and Ruby followed her lead. It was a little cluttered, in the end, but the gesture was sweet enough to ease some of the strain in Blake's spine.

"There's a lot we just… don't know," Jaune said, lowering his eyes to the floor. "We're pretty sure they were planning some kind of attack on the Vytal Festival, but other than that…" He shrugged. "As far as we know, Ozpin doesn't have a clear answer either."

Nora crossed her arms petulantly. "Not that he hasn't lied to us _ before. _" Jaune looked very badly like he wanted to retort, but he didn't. 

An uneasy silence wove between them. The faint sounds of yelling and laughter drifting in through the open window, students going about their ordinary lives, unaware of the things being discussed outside their sight.

Blake's ears flattened. She was _ tired. _It was hardly the afternoon and she just wanted to go back to bed.

Petty, idle talk from earlier that morning drifted back into her mind. She tentatively slipped her hand across the sheets, making phantasmal contact with Yang's leg, checking how it felt to touch someone.

It felt good.

She nodded to herself, pressing her palm to Yang's thigh. She glanced at Ruby and Weiss, wondering if she was being greedy for thinking of them too.

_ "Stop being so clingy, Blake. Every hour we waste on _ ** _companionship_ ** _ is another hour our brothers and sisters are oppressed." _

She almost chuckled at that one. _ What a load of hypocrisy. It was _ ** _you _ ** _ who clung to _ ** _me, _ ** _ in the end. _

Back to the real. Back to Ruby, Weiss, and Yang. Her girlfriends. Who were _ not _abusers, and whose company she was allowed to ask for.

She reached out to them, found Ruby's hand, and Weiss's eyes, and then they were touching her back. Small things, hesitant and soft. Yang's hand on her arm. She sighed.

"I'm… going to head back to the room," Blake said. "I'd like a couple minutes of space, but if you guys—" she looked at her girlfriends, "—would come join me afterwards… I'd like to discuss this more as a team." She looked back at JNPR. "Thank you," she said. "It's… probably going to take some time for me to come to grips with this, but… I'm glad you told us."

"Hey, what's a friendship without a reality-shattering revelation once in a while?" Nora said, grinning.

Ruby tugged at Blake's hand. "We'll message you when we're done," she said. "Take all the time you need."

Blake smiled at her, leaning in for a quick kiss. Ruby was so very soft. "I will," she promised, pulling reluctantly away.

Nobody tried to stop her as she left.

* * *

Ruby took a breath, the tingle of Blake on her lips as she watched the door close.

She swallowed the feelings for the moment, burying them down near her heart for easy access later.

"Thank you for telling us," she said, looking to team JNPR, choosing to ignore the big smirk on Nora's face and the luminescent blush on Jaune's. "I dunno what this is going to mean, but for what it's worth… team RWBY is on your side." She focused on Pyr—_ Amber, _ next. "And it really is good to meet you, Amber! I wish it was under better circumstances, but… I don't want you to feel alone. Maybe we're not really _ friends, _yet, but we can be, if you want!"

Amber stared back at her with a look of heartbreaking shock. "Y-yeah," she said, uncertainly. "I, uh—"

The words died on her lips as, in a blink, brown eyes flashed back to green.

Pyrrha shivered, looking around at her friends and teammates. "Oh," she said. "Well, um. Hello again."

Ruby felt a rush of emotions, mixed relief and worry chief among them. _ Oh thank god Pyrrha's back… I hope I didn't scare Amber off. _

Nora didn't seem to share the same concern, slinging an arm around Pyrrha's shoulder with a joyful shout. "Whooo!!! Good to have you back, P!" she cheered. "Hey, she was really good this time! It totally _ is _ getting better!"

Pyrrha smiled in amused confusion, before suddenly getting an even bigger hug as Jaune practically _ tackled _her, pulling her close and burying his face in her shoulder. He let out a long, deep sigh, and Pyrrha's smile grew as she returned the embrace, stroking her boyfriend's hair gently.

"Sorry," he muttered, his voice shaking.

"It's alright," Pyrrha said. "It's alright. I'm here. It's me."

"I know." He sucked air into his lungs. "Hooo… Okay, I'm okay." His shoulders sagged, as he managed to lift himself away. "Sorry, I'm just… it's a lot, y'know?" He looked up, smiling like brittle glass. They kissed, long enough for Ruby to self-consciously look away.

"I'm not going anywhere," Pyrrha said when they were done, like it was a physical law, etched into the universe's spine. "I'm sorry if I worried you all."

Ruby let out a conflicted sigh, worried and relieved all at once. She really did want to be friends with Amber, but…

"I'm glad you're okay," Weiss said, echoing Ruby's thoughts. "Were you… present?"

Pyrrha nodded, looking contemplative. "Yes. It was… very strange. I could feel myself moving, see what she saw, even feel what she felt, but there was this distinct sense of distance. It was like when you're hovering on the edge of being asleep, but haven't quite slipped away."

"Fascinating…" Weiss murmured. She shook herself, an uneasy blush settling across her features. "I'm just… very curious as to how this all works. I apologize."

"I mean, it _ is _super fascinating though, right?" Nora flopped her head down on Pyrrha's lap, causing the taller girl to sit back in surprise. "What's it feel like to having two souls, Pyrrha?"

"I… suppose it feels… _ warm," _ Pyrrha said after a moment of thought. Her hand drifted to her chest, settling lightly over her heart. "Right now, I can actually _ feel _her presence. It's almost as vivid as yours, Nora."

"I can feel her with my semblance, as well," Ren said. "It's… hard to describe. Like listening to two songs at once. Or two transparent images overlaid on top of one another."

Ruby's heart fluttered in awe. "Wow…" she murmured, embarrassed when the others looked at her. "Sorry! It just… sounds kinda cool, actually." She hung her head. "Sorry."

Weiss and Yang both patted her on the back, their hands stiffening as they met. There was some debate about how to resolve the situation, before Yang twined her fingers with Weiss's, and proceeded to continue patting. Ruby giggled at the silliness.

"No need to apologize," Pyrrha said, smiling brightly. "Thank you all for being so understanding and supportive. You're better friends than I could have hoped for."

"Pfffffft," Yang huffed. "C'mon, Pyr." She stood and crossed the aisle, pulling Pyrrha into a hug. "We're all weird. Most of us are damaged, in one way or another. But we love you, and we're not gonna ditch you just 'cause you've got a grumpy brain buddy and some new magic superpowers."

Warmth bubbled in Ruby's chest, and she shot out of her seat to join the big hug. Pyrrha was warm. Ruby wanted to make her even warmer, even if she couldn't find the words to say it.

She glanced back at Weiss, who had a hand to her mouth and emotions dancing in her eyes. To the ice queen's credit, nobody had to say anything before Weiss joined them as well. It was pretty tight, and very warm, but they made do. 

Pyrrha laughed as they pressed around her, shaking her head. "Thank you," she said, choked up.

"Wooo!" Nora yelled from where she was now stuck in Pyrrha's lap. "Solidarity forever! Also, Ruby, your boobs are in my face."

"Oh!" Ruby flushed. She tried to pull away, but the storm of interlocking arms made it kinda tricky "S-sorry!"

"It's fine! They can stay. Just wanted to point it out." 

_ "Anyhow, _" Weiss interjected, squeezing Pyrrha one last time before extricating herself and partly freeing Ruby to do the same. "We should check on Blake." She looked to Yang, who nodded firmly.

"Yeah, definitely. We're gonna be thinking this stuff over for a while, but we won't talk to anyone else about it without asking you first." Yang stepped back, crossing her arms. "Are you guys gonna tell Ozpin that we're in the know?"

Jaune sighed and shook his head. "Not unless you want us to. It's up to you guys."

"If he finds out, you're _ probably _ gonna get sucked up into his freaky shadow conspiracy," Nora said. "And lemme tellya, it is _ wild _ being officially 'in the know.' Ruby, Yang, I've met your uncle a weird number of times. He asks about you guys. It's _ super _awkward."

Ruby and Yang glanced at each other, finding mirrored discomfort at _ that _strange little detail. "Well," Ruby said. "That, is, something we're gonna have to talk to him about, maybe. Someday." She shook her head. "For now… I think it's just gonna take time to get our heads around this, but…"

She looked at team JNPR.

Jaune, tired but still steadfast. Sitting a little more at ease, relief and exhaustion both painted plainly on his face, a little of his goofy charm slowly coming back.

Nora, her cheery smile and posture an obvious mask for the iron wall of determination in her eyes, still stuck tightly to Pyrrha's side.

Ren, quiet as always, but hovering around his teammates, watching them attentively. He'd settled by Jaune at some point, leaning slightly into the other boy's shoulder, making sure he was okay.

And of course, Pyrrha… sitting taller than she had all morning, her eyes alight and her smile genuine.

She still looked _ exhausted. _ They all did. But, you could see the relief too, at finally having _ told _someone. Ruby couldn't imagine how much it must have weighed on them, to keep this secret.

Ruby felt her heart clench, a big dumb smile on her face. "We're with you," she said, sincere as she'd ever been. "Whatever happens, whatever comes, you won't have to bear it alone. I promise."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wooooo, that took a long time to figure out. Juggling 9 characters in an extended conversation is really hard.
> 
> Did a slightly different thing this time, and might end up editing later after it's posted. This chapter *has* been beta'ed, but the last scene (Ruby POV) gave me a lot of trouble, and wasn't actually looked over that heavily prior to posting. Thank you for your patience!
> 
> In any case, I hope you all enjoyed! Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis, and SeventeenFables for the beta, and thanks to Ickyickyvic, juniorthib, and shockfactor for providing advice and support! This is really becoming a team effort. :D
> 
> See you next time!


	9. Recharge

It was a comically short journey home. One crossed hall, one opened door, but somehow it felt like a long way; like the walk down a tall mountain after a dragon was slain. Nobody spoke, which didn't help.

Ruby tried to put the image out of her mind. All in all, the talk had gone well. Team JNPR (Was it JANPR now? JNAPR?) seemed to be doing okay, all things considered. And Team RWBY knew some things they hadn't this morning.

Big things. Big, big, scary things.

Ruby sighed, as the endless seven feet of hallway finally came to an end. She needed something else to think about.

_ Blake wants to cuddle, right? _ Ruby smiled at the thought. _ She's so cute. And warm. Ahhh, I wanna snuggle her and smooch her cute face and maybe her neck a little, and her tummy, and come to think of it she's got a _ ** _really _ ** _ nice butt. Am I into butts? Maybe it's just Blake's butt. Weiss has less butt but it's still a good butt I think. Do I have a nice butt? What makes a butt nice? Bodies are weird. I think I want to touch Weiss's butt now. Is that weird? _

"Ruby?"

Ruby blinked, turning to find Weiss looking at her with a familiar mix of annoyance and concern. "Is everything okay?" she asked. "You've been staring at the door for a while now."

Ruby giggled nervously, trying to stop her dumb brain from rattling on any further. "Yeah! I'm okay," she said, failing to hold eye contact with Weiss. "Um. Just, thinking."

"…Not about what we just learned, with _ that _expression," Yang teased, grinning as she draped herself over Weiss's shoulder. "Something about our lovely girlfriends?"

Ruby bit the inside of her blushing cheek. "Maaaaybe just a little," she mumbled, pressing the tips of her fingers together.

Weiss rolled her eyes at them both. She shrugged Yang off her shoulder with a sigh. "You two are… well, delightful, but honestly we're keeping Blake waiting."

Weiss was right. If Blake wanted cuddles, then cuddles she would have. Ruby nodded sharply, shaking off her silly thoughts and opening the door with purpose.

The room was lit low by the last rays of sun to escape the storm. The only sign of Blakey was the conspicuously large pile of blankets huddled on her bed. It looked like she'd pulled out her comforter out of their winter bags. And maybe Ruby's too.

Yang chuckled, setting down the duffel bag she'd collected from Nora's closet. "Uh oh, our gf's gone missing, girls. I guess we gotta go looking. There's absolutely no way she's hiding in this very room."

Weiss rolled her eyes with a silly smirk. Ruby giggled.

The pile of blankets shifted, and a single hand snaked out into the air. It held up a particular finger in Yang's direction, then curled it inward, beckoning.

Yang chuckled again, nervous now. Ruby's smile bloomed.

"YAY!" she shouted, and zoomed over to the pile. Burrowing in with zero hesitation, she quickly found a warm body and latched onto it. "Hi!"

"Hello, Ruby," mumbled Blake.

"Hi!" Ruby said again, nuzzling into her shoulder. "You doing okay?"

Blake grunted something dark, pushing her face into the pillow.

"You want hugs?"

A nod.

"You want me, Weiss, and Yang, to hug you real tight?"

A pause. Then, slowly, a deeper nod.

Ruby poked her head out of the blanket burrito. "Alright team, new mission! Cuddle Blake until her anxiety goes away!"

"Way ahead of you, sis." Yang said. "Weiss, ready?"

"Go ahead," said Weiss, grabbing the bottom of Yang's bedframe.

With the amount of effort you'd expect from two girls with active auras and years of combat training, they hefted Yang's bed off of the book piles and set it down alongside Blake's instead. One tower of tomes tumbled to the floor, and Weiss quickly set to disassembling the rest of the "supports" before they collapsed and clobbered anyone.

"Honestly," she grumbled. "How did this last so long?"

"Because I'm an architectural genius," Yang declared, using her foot to push her bed flush against Blake's. "And now, we move onto my newest project."

Ruby gasped in delight as she realized where this was going. "Oh my gosh," she said. "Blake! Blake, look, you gotta see this!"

A furry ear poked out of the bundle, followed by the rest of Blake's head as she squinted at what her girlfriends were creating, her eyes widened. "That's… a terrible idea," she said, her voice mixing disbelief with awe. "There's no way that's actually going to work in real life."

"Sure it will," Yang said with casual certainty. "Blake, where's your ribbon, can I borrow it?"

Blake's eyebrows rose, but she indicated her dresser with a tilt of her head. "The spares are in the second drawer from the bottom."

Yang leaned down to give her a brief peck on the lips, then started digging. She came back with a familiar length of black, high-durability fabric. "Cool," she said, ducking down to the floor. "Hey, Weiss, help me with the other end?"

"Of course," Weiss said, dropping to her knees as Yang started tying the bedframes tightly together. Yang tossed the roll of ribbon underneath—Weiss caught it, and repeated Yang's actions on the other end.

Ruby watched all this in fascination. "You're tying the beds together?"

"So they don't get pushed apart, yeah," Yang explained. She caught the ribbon when Weiss tossed it back, doing one last knot for good measure. "Alright, that should hold as long as we don't move around too much."

"Neat!" Ruby said. She eyed the gap between the mattresses. "So, how are we not gonna get sucked down in between them?"

Weiss answered by taking a pillow off her own bed and stuffing it in the gap. "Hmm," she murmured, observing her handiwork. "It's a start. Yang, can you throw me Ruby's?"

"Already on it!" 

The pillow sailed across the room and directly into Weiss's outstretched hand. She set it down as well, humming to herself as she packed it in carefully. "There," she said, stepping back and pausing to regard her handiwork. "Oh, that's hideous."

"I think you mean _ awesome, _" Yang said. She sat down on her end of the structure, then rolled over onto the pillows. "…Okay you're right this sucks," she declared, "but we can work with it. Weiss, get the thingy?"

A conspiratorial smile crossed Weiss's face. She nodded sharply, going back over to the duffel.

Ruby craned her neck to try and see what Weiss was doing. She hadn't been privy to this part—Weiss and Yang had quietly bartered with Nora to acquire the package while Ruby talked with Pyrrha, Jaune, and Ren—but as Weiss dragged it over something clicked in the back of Ruby's head.

She gasped. "OH! Is that the—?"

Yang nodded. "Nora said we can have it."

"It" was a mattress topper. Queen-size. Memory foam. Never used.

As the story went, back in Freshman year, Team JNPR had gone on a mission and stayed in either a "slightly fancy" (Pyrrha's words) or "totally swanky" (Nora's words) hotel, where Nora had discovered memory foam for the first time. She'd fallen in love, and when Jaune and Pyrrha decided to get a new, bigger bed, Nora decided to celebrate her best friends' relationship by buying them the nicest present she could think of.

The issue had been that, at the time, Nora hadn't known the difference between "full-size" and "queen-size," and went with the one whose name made her happier. By the time she realized her mistake, she'd become enamored with the idea of having a bed that large, and decided to keep the topper in their closet, as an "aspirational keepsake." She'd even gotten sheets for it at some point, which Yang and Weiss had also snagged.

Ruby felt a giddy warmth as she watched Weiss lift the thing. "She just _ gave _it to us!?"

"Yup!" Yang let out a wistful sigh. "Nora is a god damn treasure."

"We've _ gotta _pay her back."

"Oh definitely. Smuggling, arson, hiding bodies, I've got her."

"Yang?" Weiss called. "Please stop planning crimes and help me move this thing."

"In a sec!" Yang nudged Ruby, and shooting her a grin that signaled mischief. "Alright Rubes, got a puzzle for you. Me and Weiss need to fix up this bed, but _ Blake _needs to stay wrapped up nice and snug. How are we gonna do both at once?"

Ruby blinked, then grinned as the idea took root. Before Blake could protest, she semblanced herself out of the blankets and over to the side of the bed. Gently, she wedged her hands under the warm bundle.

Blake craned her neck to look up at Ruby with wide, pleading eyes. "Please don't drop me."

Ruby's heart felt like it was going to explode. _ AAAAAH she's so cute she's so cute she's so cute I'm gonna cry. I wanna be cool and impress her but I'm so gay I just wanna cry. _

Somehow, she settled for kissing Blake on the top of her cute little head, directly between her cute little ears. "Never," she whispered, hoping she sounded cool, hoping her huge dumb burning blush didn't make her sound less cool.

Then she lifted Blake into her arms, and her head went quiet.

Blake was the kind of heavy that all people are. Ruby liked holding her.

Ruby dimly observed as Yang stripped the fitted sheets and helped Weiss unfurl the mattress topper over the middle of the bed, but her eyes were locked on Blake's face, on her eyes, narrow and warm, her ears lowered and content. Blake smiled at her, and Ruby didn't know how to externalize what that made her feel. 

"There!" said Yang triumphantly. Ruby realized she was rocking slightly, and steadied herself, forcing herself to come back to the world.

Blake seemed to shake something off as well, as they both looked down at the monstrous pile of softness Yang and Weiss had constructed. The topper didn't quite fit perfectly, and the pillows stuffed in the crevice left a weird lump in the middle, but it looked pretty alright all things considered, especially with the new sheets forced over it. 

"Not that I don't appreciate it," Blake said, ear twitching restlessly, "but you guys didn't have to go quite this far."

Weiss crossed her arms. "Don't think we're just pampering you," she huffed. "This is a mutual arrangement. Now Ruby, set her down so I can get in there too."

For a moment, Ruby really wanted to argue that Blake lived in her arms now, but then she took one look at the weary blush on Weiss's cute face and recognized the wisdom in her words. "Awwww, okay," she sighed. She gently lowered Blake down into the middle of the beds, planting another little smooch on her nose as she did. Blake couldn't hide her tired smile, and Ruby couldn't hide hers.

Meanwhile, Weiss casually undid her hair, set her scroll on the floor, tossed her socks off, and immediately started searching for the seam in Blake's cocoon. "Ruby, Yang, you two get in here as well," she said, without looking up. "And grab the sheets off my bed while you're at it."

They took a while to get settled in. The new layout really _ was _ a lot nicer than what they'd gone for earlier, given that this time they actually had enough _ room _ for four people to lie down without squishing each other. Plus, it was _ soft. _Nora'd definitely had the right idea with this memory foam stuff.

Thunder cracked the distant sky. The light outside was fading fast, and the wind whistled through the trees outside, clattering branches against the window. Ruby spooned closer to Blake's back, burying her head in a wave of dark hair as Yang snuggled up to Weiss on the other end.

"Hey…" Blake murmured, curling a little closer to Ruby. "Thank you. You really didn't have to do all this."

"Like I said: It isn't _ just _for you," Weiss said, softly. She kissed Blake on the cheek, and tucked her head under the other girl's chin.

After a little while, a sniffle rose from where she lay.

Ruby stretched her arm as far as it'd go and began rubbing gentle circles on Weiss's shoulder. Yang and Blake took this as a cue to squeeze Weiss from both sides.

It wasn't long before Weiss really was crying. Her breath came in quiet gasps as she pressed her face to Blake's chest. Her hands grasped at Ruby's arm, her legs tangling with Yang's.

"I'm sorry," Weiss eventually said. "I know you're upset too, and I… I want to be there for you, but, I think, I need to be held for a little while?"

"That's okay," Blake said, squeezing her tight. "'Mutual arrangement,' right?"

Weiss chuckled a little, closing her eyes as Yang stroked her hair. "You're all so… stars, you're too good to me," she said. She swallowed heavily. "I've always felt a little apprehensive around Professor Ozpin, but… I never thought… I never _ thought. _"

Blake nodded, kissing her hair. "Yeah."

"And Pyrrha…" Weiss shook her head. "It's unspeakable."

"Mhm," Yang murmured softly, tucking her arm tighter around Weiss's waist.

"And I don't know what to do about any of it," Weiss said. She sounded fragile, brittle. "Just… what are we supposed to do now?"

Ruby drifted her fingers through Weiss's hair. "I… dunno what we're gonna do," she admitted. "But we're gonna do it together, right?"

"Absolutely," Yang said. "Nobody's in this alone." She shifted her gaze, catching Ruby's eye before shifting back to their girlfriends. "Blake? How are you doing?"

"Better," Blake said. She reached out and took Yang's hand with her free arm, using the other to hug Weiss tight. "That talk just… brought a lot of stuff flooding back. I worried myself sick about the White Fang for months. And when nothing happened, I guess I convinced myself I'd just been paranoid? But apparently I was _ right, _ and now I just have to wonder… where did all those people _ go? _ Cinder, Torchwick… _ Adam. _ They're out there, somewhere. Whatever that all was, there's no way it's over." A pause, and when her voice came back it was weaker. "Adam wouldn't give up like that."

The sound of rain on the windowpane filled the silence.

"You're probably right," Weiss said, her voice steadying out. "They probably _ are _ still out there, and they probably _ are _ still plotting something." She shifted up, adjusting her position so she could press her forehead against Blake's, tired eyes to tired eyes. "And we'll probably have to face them all again someday." She ran a hand through Blake's hair, sweeping it back across her cheek and tucking it behind her hominid ear. "But we're _ safe _here. At least, for now." She smiled, her cheeks pinking slightly. "You're safe, we love you, and we're not letting you go."

She kissed Blake, and it was all Ruby could do not to just scream. She glanced up at Yang and found a similarly fond expression on her face.

"We have the cutest girlfriends," Ruby said, extending a fist.

Yang bumped back without hesitation. "That we do, sis."

Weiss broke the kiss to glare at Ruby. "Hey! We're having a tender moment here,_ " _she grumpled.

"Aww, we love you too though," Ruby hummed, wiggling happily.

"The feeling's entirely mutual," Blake chuckled, shifting to tangle a leg with Ruby's. Her pants were rough on Ruby's skin, but that was nice too, in its own way. A different kind of contact, but not an unwelcome one.

Yang laughed, as they drifted into wordlessness again. For a moment, her hand slipped free of Blake's as she reached out to rest it on Ruby's shoulder. Ruby reached out to touch her arm, noting how warm she was. It was odd, noticing how different it felt to touch her sister compared to her girlfriends. Not bad, not even _ less, _just… simpler. Calming. And... she needed calming, right now.

They stayed in that moment a while, just warm and happy and safe, but it couldn't last forever. The storm outside continued, more violent with the minutes passing. Lightning flashed, transforming the room to a strange contrast of itself for a single imaginary moment.

Ruby sniffed, hugging Blake tighter as her smile broke under the weight of darker thoughts. "I feel so lost," she admitted. "Like Weiss said, I just can't figure out how to do what's right."

"You don't have to know right away," Blake said. 

"I know," Ruby murmured. "It's just…" She trailed off, an odd panic settling in as she found her mouth empty. She focused on the words that were trying to get out of her, absentmindedly drumming her fingers against Blake's thigh to help her focus. 

_ I'm the leader, _ she thought. _ I'm supposed to look at the threats we face and come up with the best solutions. I just don't know how to do that. I don't know how to prepare us for fighting Cinder, or how to protect Pyrrha, or even whether we should trust Ozpin. I don't know anything, and I'm scared. I'm scared because I know that if I mess up, you could die. Just like mom died. And, I can't even think about that, because the idea of having even one of you gone, of having a _ ** _hole _ ** _ like that in my life… _

But her voice just… wouldn't come out. No matter how she tried, she just couldn't say the words. She pressed her forehead into Blake's neck, a low noise building in the back of her throat as frustration twisted her heart and put tears in her eyes.

"It's so _ much _," was all she eventually managed to say. She hoped it was enough.

Blake and Weiss shared a silent glance, and Blake quietly twisted herself around to take Ruby in her arms, and just… _ held _her, so tight that Ruby's aura flickered under her hands. Ruby closed her eyes, hugging back and pushing her defenses down, gasping as the full force of Blake's strength hit her.

She'd never felt so small.

Gradually, Ruby's heartbeat slowed. She let her eyes flutter shut, breathing in Blake's scent. It was strange—not something she was used to yet, really, but comforting all the same. Earth and subtle sweetness.

They slipped into silence again, gradually letting the tension drizzle away. The rain was coming down hard and loud now, and wind rattled the window frame. The light was a low shade of blue.

"You doing okay, sis?" Yang asked, her voice familiar and gentle.

Ruby mumbled something that was supposed to be "yeah." She nodded, to clarify. "Words are hard, but I'm ok."

"Good, good…" Yang sighed.

Ruby pushed herself up, looking over Blake and Weiss at her sister. "Are you? Ok?"

Yang rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. "Not really. I'm tired, and pissed, and I don't know what to do about any of it. But, honestly? I don't want to think about it anymore. Right now I just want to hug you guys until I stop thinking."

"That sounds delightful," Weiss chuckled. "Frankly, I _also_ find speculating on the machinations of shadowy forces beyond our ken rather _ unappealing _when I could instead be snuggling with my three very attractive, very warm girlfriends."

"Hear hear," Blake chuckled.

Yang snickered, turning over again and staring at Weiss with warm, dark eyes. "Sounds good to me," she said. "Soooo… tell me more about these attractive girlfriends of yours. They sound neat."

Weiss smirked, her eyes drifting closed. "Well, one's an insufferable hothead. She's always trying to protect us, even when we don't need it, and while it sometimes makes me want to bang my head against the wall_ … _ it's sweet, as well. But, I worry that her heart is too big for her chest sometimes."

_ "Dang, that's pretty big," _ Blake muttered. Ruby and Yang both snickered in tandem.

Weiss's brows pinched. "—By which I _ mean, _ she pushes herself too hard. I don't think she realizes just how wonderful she is, and that even if the whole concept of 'deservingness' _ wasn't _ a load of nonsense peddled by charlatans and class structures, she'd still more than deserve us. She's kind, and thoughtful, utterly hilarious and _ stupidly _ brave. And on top of all that?" Her brow twitched. "She's _ somehow _ the only one of us who's never gotten below an A. In _ any _class."

Blake's ears perked. "Wait, _ really?" _ Even Grimm Theory II with Onyxia?"

"Yep." Weiss smiled, cracking an eye to gaze proudly at Yang.

Yang had the biggest, goofiest smile Ruby had ever seen on her face. "Awww… it wasn't that big a deal."

"Yang," Ruby said, finding her words coming a little easier. "That's like… the only class _ Weiss _ ever got a C in _ . _"

"Oh damn, really?"

"Yes, _ really," _Weiss huffed. "Anyway, I'm not done!" She turned to Blake. "There's also my other girlfriend. She plays herself all aloof and mysterious, and world weary, but she bears a _ remarkably _pure heart—especially given her reading habits."

Blake curled into Ruby a little, muttering a quiet curse as she blushed.

"And like the first," Weiss continued, "she doesn't give herself nearly enough credit. She's already survived more than most of us will ever face; a woman of her own making, self-defined and free. She isn't just an incredible person; she _ inspires _me, every moment of every day."

"You're going to break her," Yang chuckled, as Blake curled up fully into a little ball and made a flustered sound.

Weiss shifted, reaching out and hugging Blake to herself. "I couldn't break her if I tried," she said, resting her head against Blake's spine.

"Awwwww," Ruby intoned. "Smooth."

"And then there's my _ third _girlfriend," Weiss said.

Ruby's heart leapt an inch at the upward curl in Weiss's voice. "Oh crap, here it comes," she muttered. Blake snorted out a laugh.

"She's an _ utter _ terror, sometimes," Weiss said. "She's impulsive, and she's headstrong, and sometimes it seems like she can't take _ anything _seriously…"

Ruby chuckled bashfully. "Yup, that's me…"

"But then the next moment, she's the bravest of us." Weiss's voice fell, uncertainty entering it. "And she scares the _ piss _ out of me constantly, because she's worth more to me than I can ever put into words, and she sometimes seems to lack _ any _ sense of self preservation! She is baffling, impetuous, hilarious, _ frustrating, _ patient, kindhearted, _ gorgeous, _ and so much wiser than she has any _ damn _right to be." She her eyes watered, as she smiled big and soft. "And I love her for all of it."

Ruby felt herself shake, and realized that she was crying again. "Weissss…" she mumbled. "Stop it, you're mean."

"I… what?" Weiss looked at her in utter confusion. "How—?"

"You're too nice! Stop being so nice, it's mean!"

"Wh?!" Weiss's mouth opened in an incredulous grin. "I can't believe you. No, scratch that, of course I can." She lifted herself over Blake and pressed her lips to Ruby's forehead. "How did you _ ever _get me to fall in love with a dolt like you?" she huffed.

Ruby giggled, tilting her head to kiss Weiss properly, making note of the way Blake's ears perked up as they did. She was almost tempted to continue, turn this into a makeout session on the spot, but then an arm snaked around Weiss's middle and yanked her away.

"H-hey!" Ruby protested, making grabby motions with her hands. "Mine!"

"I'll give her back in a sec, Rubes!" Yang said.

"Hey!" Weiss protested, wriggling in a most undignified manner. "Let me go! I'm not an _object _for you to fight over!"

"Aww, but Weiss…" Yang used two fingers to push Weiss's chin up to look at her. "You said all that nice stuff about us, and we haven't even gotten to return the favor," she simpered. "It's only fair, y'know?"

Weiss flushed, her eyes dilating even as she did her best to compose herself. "Do your worst, Xiao Long," she said, in a voice which might have been imperious if Yang didn't practically have her by the jaw. "I can handle a few compliments, _ unlike some people." _

Yang rolled her eyes. "Well, you covered my absolute gremlin of a sister. And my other girlfriend, who is everything you said, and _ also _hotter than a habañero pepper."

Blake snorted, burying her laugh in Ruby's chest.

"As for _ you…" _Yang's smile faded. "You're… beautiful." 

Weiss gave Yang a thoroughly bewildered look, even as her flush spread to her neck. "…Thanks?"

Yang swallowed, looking away as her confidence evaporated in an instant. "S-sorry! I. Uh."

Ruby snickered, peeking over Blake's shoulder. "Gaaayy…" she whispered.

Yang glared at her, sticking out her tongue. "Well, can _ you _ describe this without getting flustered?" she demanded, gesturing at the totality of Weiss. "Like, _ all of this? _ This, gorgeous, brilliant, wonderful person?"

"M-maybe!" Ruby shot back. "She's, um, she's pretty! Yeah." She sank back down behind Blake. "I win."

Weiss's smile had been growing the whole time, and at last it seemed she was unable to hold back. "You lovely _ idiots," _ she wheezed, laughing girlish and giddy as she hugged Yang tight. "I love you both so much. Even if _ neither _of you know how to compliment a pretty girl."

"Hmmm… maybe I could give it a shot?" Blake said, her voice entirely casual.

She patted Ruby gently, and rolled over to face Weiss again. "She calls other people terrors, impetuous, headstrong," said Blake. "And yet she's all those things herself. She's devious. _ Frustrating. _ But most of all, she's _ defiant. _ She had a comfortable, easy life laid out before her, and she threw it away because it wasn't what _ she _wanted. She refused to be defined by anyone else, and when her father disowned her… I think that just made her even stronger." 

She smiled, reaching out to cup Weiss's cheek. "You called me a self-made woman," Blake said, looking deep into Weiss's eyes. "But if _ I _ am, then so are you. You are not your father's daughter. You're not some Atlas snob. You're _ you, _ fundamentally rejecting all labels but the ones you write for yourself. The Weiss who's here, in this bed, in this _ moment, _ is a person I never would have believed could exist, just a few years ago. I've never felt so lucky to be wrong."

There was a pause, and then Yang whistled low. "I think Blake wins this one, sis."

Ruby giggled, hugging Blake tight. "Yup."

Weiss stared into Blake's eyes like she needed to memorize them, utterly frozen in place. "Um," she finally managed. "I think you've stopped my heart, but I feel like I should thank you for it?"

Blake smirked, lidding her eyes and leaning in towards Weiss. "You could kiss me, if you think that'd start it again."

Weiss's face pinched with the strange lovechild of amusement and frustration, and then she flowed into motion, crashing over Blake until she'd rolled her fully onto her back, straddling her in the process.

(They almost squished Ruby as she hastily scrambled out of the way, but she hardly felt like complaining.)

They stilled. Blake's eyes were slitted, her lips parted, and her breath came in quick, quiet gasps. Weiss stared down at this image with cold intensity. "You want me to kiss you?" she asked.

Blake nodded, swallowing hard. "Please," she rasped.

And Weiss rushed down onto her without further hesitation, lips on lips and hands on wrists, powerful for all her smallness. Blake arched into her, a quiet growl in the back of her throat, struggling against Weiss with no intent to free herself. Once again, there was tongue.

Ruby found herself experiencing an entirely new cocktail of emotions as she watched her girlfriends unravel. It started as a warmth in her cheeks and neck, then as a warmth in her belly, tingling more intensely with little sound they made.

"Wow…" she breathed. "Is this what watching porn is supposed to be like?"

"Oh my god." Yang let out a sputtering laugh. "I did _ not _need to hear that."

"Shhhhh!" Ruby hissed. "I wanna watch!"

"…Okay, yeah, same."

Blake snickered into Weiss's mouth, and the Ice Queen shot a pair of particularly frosty glances at Ruby and Yang. "Really?"

"We _ did _start making out without even asking if it was okay first," Blake gasped, a guilty twist to her voice. "…S-sorry, by the way."

Weiss blinked, seeming not to have considered this, before her eyes widened hilariously. "Oh," she said, sitting up and quickly smoothing out her skirt—which had hiked quite a ways up her thigh. "Well. Hm. I… apologize. A-anyway, thank you for your participation in this abject foolishness, Blake."

"Aww, are you done making out?" Ruby muttered, scooting forward and nuzzling into Blake's neck. "No fair."

Blake cleared her throat, trying to pretend she wasn't flustered having Weiss still very much on top of her. "We don't _ really _have to get up any time soon," she said. "I think today's pretty much a write-off at this point." A crack of lightning punctuated her sentence.

"Yeah, today's done," Yang agreed, moving into Weiss's former spot at Blake's side. "I've had more emotions in the last seventy-two hours than the rest of my life put together. I want to stay right here until I get hungry, eat something cheap and easy, and then come right back when I'm done."

"No objections," Weiss sighed, then gasped as Yang did something devious to the hem of her skirt. "Hey! I thought you were tired."

"I said I was _ staying right here." _Yang smirked. "Didn't say I was out of energy."

"Oh. Well. Hm."

Ruby's smile shined as she buried herself in Blake's side and just _ existing. _ "Yaaaaay," she mumbled. "Team bonding."

"That… is quite a euphemism," Blake said, kissing her lightly on the forehead. "You and Yang aren't uncomfortable with… both being here?"

The temperature in the room dropped a degree, as Ruby and Yang exchanged a surprised and wary look.

"I hadn't thought about that," Ruby admitted. "But…"

She searched inside herself, forcing herself to _ think _ over the rapid pulse of her heart. She nodded, slowly, as it crystallized.

"I'm okay with it if she is."

Yang's eyes widened, a little. "Uh," she said. 

"Only if she is though!" Ruby insisted. "And only with like, kissing! Maybe some squeezing. I'll let you know how I feel about fondling when we get to it."

"I… think I'm okay with that?" Yang said, sounding a little surprised at herself. "But yeah, no sex stuff. Specifically, nobody's hands or faces below anyone's belt."

"Agreed," Weiss said, softly. Blake nodded, reaching out to take her hands.

"Then… I guess I'm okay with this too?" Yang sounded more surprised than anything else. "I dunno. Is this weird?"

Ruby felt something in her spirit give way, and she slumped out a laugh. "We share the same two girlfriends and we just found out one of our best friends is a secret magical superhero with a dead woman's soul riding shotgun in her brain. _Life _is weird. I think we're just along for the ride."

Yang regarded her with warm amusement. "Yeah, fuck it," she chuckled. "Just… promise you'll speak up if anything feels bad? And, everybody keep their pants on."

"I'm wearing a skirt," Ruby reminded her. "And so's Weiss?"

"Well, y'know, _ metaphorically." _

"So this is happening?" Blake asked. She was trying, she really was, but she just couldn't keep the eager out of her voice.

It was adorable enough to bring down the last wall. Ruby laughed and threw herself onto Blake, kissing up her collarbone. They found each others' lips, and the moments turned to wax and melted all away.

It was strange, getting lost like this, in the tug of sheets and the movement of bodies, the subtle touches and breathless questions. New, strange, and a little frightening, but good.

A lot of things happened, as the afternoon bled out into evening, as the storm outside raged and the gears of Beacon Tower ticked on high above them all. The awkward laughter of those moments didn't matter one bit to the world beyond their room, but that was part of what made it such a magical thing. It wasn't sex, but it was maybe making love. Whatever it was, it was theirs, and theirs alone.

Eventually they fell still, and Ruby found herself with her eyes closed, her body glowing warm as she listened to the patter and rumble of the storm.

Eventually that faded out, leaving her with the warm quiet of Blake's breath on her breast, the soft press of Weiss's hand on her belly, the gentle glow of Yang's body close beside, and the beat of all their hearts together, slow and steady.

Eventually, even that dimmed into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Things got kinda messy at the end there. Thanks to 
> 
> (oh god here we go)
> 
> FriendOfYggdrasil, Sgt Chrysalis, shockfactor, juniorthib, and ickyickyvic, who all contributed to this chapter in various complicated ways that I'm going to generalize as "beta reading" but which honestly qualify as way more than that as this point. Thank you all for the support.
> 
> And thank you for reading!
> 
> (P.S.: As of now, juniorthib and I are maybe synchornizing our update schedules on purpose! So go read Grounded Lightning! It's really good!)


	10. Subtlety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changed the rating to M for some fairly tame suggestive content.

Team RWBY's window faced almost directly due east. 

This meant that they got a lovely view of the sunrise, should they happen to wake up early enough to see it. And with that sunrise came a square of light, divided in sixteen by the window frame, which slowly manifested itself against the bookshelves—a little to the left of the door.

As the sun continued its rise, this square of light slipped down past the old textbooks. It hit the desk, crossed the hardwood floor, edged onto the carpet, and then found the foot of Yang's bed. It continued to climb, up across shapes beneath sheets, up to illuminate stilled hands, shoulders, and then finally—

Blake groaned, turning her face against the mattress to keep the bright out of her eyes. She sniffed, disorientation shifting to confusion. She smelled… citrus and sweat.  _ Yang? _

Someone's hand was on her shoulder. It took a moment to realize it was too small to be Yang's.

Blake opened an eye, squinting sharply as the sun did unpleasant things to her unadjusted night vision. Her vision resolved the hazy image of a pale, slender arm. Another hand grasped the elbow— _ that  _ hand was Yang's hand, but the rest…

She blinked, forcing her eyes to clear as she lifted herself slowly, peering at the pile of yellow and white.

It took a moment to parse what she was seeing.

_ Oh, right.  _ She smiled, setting her head back down again.

As she did,  _ another  _ hand wrapped around her shoulder. Her… very  _ bare  _ shoulder. The hand then let go, darted forward, curved around her clavicle, and  _ poked her boob. _

"Hehe."

Blake stared at the offending hand for a moment, slowly parsing how very much not wearing a shirt she was. She glanced around, noticing the familiar garment hanging from Ruby's bedframe.  _ When did  _ ** _that _ ** _ happen? _

The hand poked her boob again. "Hehehe."

Blake lay back down and turned to meet silver eyes. "Good morning," she whispered.

"G'morning," Ruby yawned. She blinked the sleepy out of her eyes, and relaxed into an adorable smile. "Your boobs are cute."

"Thanks," Blake mumbled, noting that Ruby was still entirely clothed. "When did I…?"

Ruby blew out what was supposed to be a raspberry but came out as more of a wimpy  _ ptbht.  _ "Well, we were canoodling when Weiss realized she still had her bra on, and Yang was all 'why don't you take it off then' wink-wonk, and then  _ you  _ said  _ —" _

"Riiight," Blake sighed, lying back and closing her eyes as the memory of last night clicked back into place. "Was that okay? I'm sorry if that was weird, or too much, or…"

She felt Ruby's hand drift across the skin of her belly, tingling warm. "It was nice," Ruby said. She shifted, wrapping herself onto Blake's side and kissing her cheek. "You're both pretty. I like looking at you. And the canoodling was pretty good too."

Blake chuckled, and a blush crept onto her face as she felt Ruby nuzzle into her neck.  _ Pthala be praised.  _ Her smile twitched.  _ And Pruth be praised too, because last night's 'canoodling' session definitely went a little past 'romantic.' _

She felt Ruby poke at her boob again. Then, she felt a poke at her  _ other  _ boob.

"Hehehe."

"Hehehe."

"Good morning, Yang," Blake said, she tilted her head, finding the vivid purple of her eyes, shining in a halo of wild gold hair. Like Ruby she was fully clothed, but that hardly made her any less stunning. 

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," Blake replied. "You good?"

Yang's face took on a serious look. "I've got some bad news, Blake. I dunno how to tell you this, but I think I'm attracted to you. Worse, I think I'm  _ in love.  _ "

Blake resisted the impulse to chuckle. "Oh no," she deadpanned. "What a terrible thing. And what's worse, I seem to be in love with you as well. How will we ever survive."

"The true tragedy is that  _ I'm  _ somehow in love with two  _ jerks _ who won't let me sleep," Weiss grumbled, lifting her head to glare at Blake. She was using Yang as a mattress, and like Blake she was  _ also  _ not wearing a shirt, pale white cascading down across her body in a manner that was... utterly beyond Blake's capacity for words.

Ruby started humming a happy little tune. "I'm happy," she said.

"We can tell," Weiss murmured, laying her head back on Yang's chest. "It's a good look on you."

"You're cute," Ruby said. She wiggled up over Blake, reaching out to poke Weiss in the boob.

"She  _ is  _ cute," Blake agreed, extending her finger to do the same. Weiss gave them both a raised eyebrow for their trouble, but made no effort to stop them.

"Thirded," Yang agreed, smooching Weiss on the top of her head. "This… this was alright. We should do this again."

"Tonight?" Ruby suggested. "And tomorrow night?"

Blake felt a twinge of anxiety. "I don't know," she said, reluctantly. "This  _ was  _ nice, but... too much more sleeping together might be a bit overwhelming for me."

This was met with nods all around. "You can use my bed, if that's alright," Weiss said. "Since yours is…" she made a vague downward gesture.

Blake's chest clenched as she realized the implication. Though nobody had thought about it at the time, this new arrangement meant her bed was functionally a communal resource now.

And that... actually hit her kinda hard. Her bunk at Beacon was the first permanent space she'd ever had to call her own. Yes it was small, and yes it was in a shared dorm room, but it'd been a place that was  _ hers.  _ And that… meant more to her than she'd realized.

It seemed the others had noticed her inner turmoil, patiently waiting for her to speak.

"Is… it bad if I maybe need an actual space of my own?" she asked. "I don't want to break this up, but…"

"You can have my bed?"

Ruby's hands were on her hands, silver eyes looking into yellow. "I like this," Ruby said. "Like, _ a lot.  _ I think I might never want to sleep alone again." She looked away, suddenly quite pink. "It's fine if you want to take your bed back, I'd just put mine down here, but—"

"No, that's…" Blake felt sweetness welling up in her chest. "Thank you. That… would be really nice I think."

Ruby's face turned into a brilliant smile. "Mmm," she mumbled, nuzzling into Blake's belly. "I wanna make sure you're comfy."

"I know. Thank you." Blake let her eyes close again, feeling a warm rumble in the back of her throat. For a moment, she held it back like she always did, but… she didn't have to with them, did she?

Blake  _ purred. _

Not the quiet rumble she occasionally let slip when she was happy, either. Full-on, resonant and soothing.

Ruby startled a little at the sudden vibration but then let out a sleepy giggle and settled back in. "I'm gonna cry," she whispered. "Oh my god Blake."

Weiss was staring at her in complete and utter awe. Yang just looked on with that same dreamy smugness as always.

The sun was well on top of them all now, but instead of wincing at the glare Blake basked in the warmth, running her fingers through Ruby's hair. It was always softer than she expected, and as the strands separated around her fingers she could see the wine-red color that so often looked like black.

The smell of roses and gunpowder.

Blake's purring only grew.  _ Wish I could stay in bed all day. Even though that's kinda how yesterday went. _

_ Yesterday. _

_ Which was Sunday. _

_ Wait. _

She stopped purring, unwilling to sit up and dislodge Ruby. "So… what time is it?"

Weiss's eyes got big—bigger, as Yang casually lifted the girl off her chest and set her down between herself and the others. She then reached down off the bed and plucked her scroll from where she'd stuck it the night before. She stared at it for a moment. "Uhhhhhhhh… ten minutes till eight?"

Blake blinked. "And Gardenia's class starts…?"

"At eight," Yang confirmed.

There was a tragic pause.

"Our breakfast…" Ruby moaned, slumping off Blake and sinking her face into the pillow. "Ugh, and we slept through dinner last night too."

Weiss sat up, resolution settling onto her features. She hopped primly out of bed, shrugging off the rest of her clothes as she strutted over to the dresser, ignoring Ruby's squeak of surprise and Yang's quiet whistle of appreciation. "We'll have a big lunch, now shut up and get ready," she said over her shoulder. "We're not making it to class late just because I love you."

Blake laughed as they fell out of bed, feeling lighter than she had in years. She'd just gathered her clothes and was about to head off to the bathroom as usual, when an insistent little thought grabbed her.

Standing in the middle of the dorm room, her hands drifted to the button of her pants. She hesitated, but for only a second, then slipped it free.

She changed more quickly than the others, but nobody commented on it. Blake wasn't even sure if anyone looked. But once they were dressed, Weiss turned and hugged her without saying a word.

* * *

They broke out onto the grounds into the brilliant morning sunshine with less than four minutes to spare. The year's first flowers bloomed among the shoots that lined the path, dew and the smell of spring swirling around them as they tore towards the lecture hall.

They arrived with maybe a minute to spare, piling into their customary seats. Yang had been laughing hysterically for a while by this point, and collapsed gratefully onto the desk in front of her. "God. We are  _ stupid  _ ."

Blake slumped bonelessly against her side. "We're all utterly hopeless," she agreed. "Did we even set an alarm? I don't think we did."

"Ex _ cuse  _ me," Weiss huffed, settling down beside Blake and whipping out her notebook. She was, predictably, the only one who'd thought to grab one. "I refuse to take the blame for any of this."

Next to her, Ruby threw her hands up into the air. "Oh you are  _ totally  _ guilty too, Miss 'I won't stop being gorgeous long enough to let Ruby sleep!'"

Yang reached out across the desk to poke at Weiss's hand. "I don't think Weiss  _ can  _ turn off being pretty," she said. "I sure haven't seen her do it."

The comment earned Yang a patented Ice Queen Glare _ .  _ "Oh you  _ know  _ just how smooth you are, don't you?"

Yang regarded her with a teasing smile, enjoying the playful indignance in those icy blues. "You don't like it?"

"Oh, I absolutely love it," Weiss sniffed. "But it's  _ exceptionally  _ annoying."

A throat was cleared, drawing RWBY's attention forward, to where Professor Alexis Gardenia was staring at them over her notes. Yang observed that about half the class was  _ also  _ looking their way with a smattering of puzzled or irritated expressions.

The professor let the silence linger only a moment. "If you're all quite finished?" she said. "Let's begin."

Without further ado, she launched into the lecture. Gardenia was a little Atlesian woman with a big voice, and an expert in the fine art of pointing powerfully. Despite teaching "Professional Hunting," which was basically a business class, she actually managed to make  _ paperwork  _ sound interesting enough to wake Yang the rest of the way up. Alas, nothing could save poor Ruby, who dozed off against Weiss's shoulder halfway through the lecture and never recovered.

Halfway through, though, Yang was yanked away from Gardenia's captivating slideshow on Hunter-specific exemptions in Valish income tax law by a subtle nudge on the shoulder from her lovely partner.

She glanced over, catching Blake's eye. Blake passed her a piece of paper—filched from Weiss's notebook, if her twitchy eyelid was reliable evidence. On it was a message in purple gel pen.

_ 'Don't react, but we're being watched.' _

Yang's eyebrows rose, but she managed to keep from looking around. Blake flicked her a yellow pen under the table and Yang caught it with practiced ease, casually bringing it out to jot down her response.  _ 'Who?' _

Blake penned her response with lightning precision.  _ 'Hikari + Taffeta from HTHR. Florence + Wister + Roan from FLWR. + the usual ROYL death glare.' _

Yang resisted the overwhelming urge to roll her eyes at the last one.  _ 'Uh oh. Better watch out for CRDL 2.0.' _

Blake snorted, covering it with a cough.  _ 'True terror.'  _ She paused, her brows knitting, and she jotted down a longer note.  _ 'FWR like gossip, no surprise. Don't know why H and T though. It's actually weirding me out?' _

Yang let her eyes flicker off to the right. HTHR were sitting together near the entrance. Four girls: Heather, Taffeta, Hikari, and and Ruth. Sure enough, after a few seconds, Taffeta snuck a peek at them. She was struggling to maintain a mask of placid focus, but she wasn't a very good actor.

She was at least  _ trying  _ for subtlety though. As Yang was watching Taffeta shoot awkward half-glances their way, Hikari just turned her whole head. Their eyes locked, and after an awkward moment, Hikari smiled and gave a little wave, before turning to whisper something to her teammate. Taffeta's dark cheeks darkened further, and an arm made of purplish-red aura flashed into existence specifically to slap Hikari on the back of her head.

Yang and Blake gave each other baffled looks. Then a new paper slid its way in front of them, bearing a message in perfect blue ballpoint.

_ 'I agree that it's strange, but would you two please focus? I'm already going to have to teach this class to one dolt as it is.' _

Yang chuckled.  _ 'Fair enough,'  _ she wrote on the side of Weiss's note. After a moment's consideration, she added a little  _ '<3'  _ as well.

Weiss looked down at the paper, and a little smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. She quickly penned her own little  _ '<3'  _ mirroring Yang's, aligned so that the tips were touching.

Yang let loose a dramatic gasp, clutching her heart in mock astonishment. Weiss stuck out her tongue, just for an instant, before going back to writing her notes like the model student she was.

Then Blake, who'd been watching the two of them with blatant amusement through all of this, added another little  _ '<3'  _ perpendicular to theirs, such that all three of the points were connected.

Yang _giggled, _and Weiss nearly lost her composure. She stayed facing steadfastly forward, but the big goofy smile on her face just made it look like she'd suddenly fallen in love with compound interest.

Inspiration hit. Yang looked at Blake, and at Weiss, and with a flick of her pen circled the three hearts together.

Below it, she wrote  _ 'The Bees' Schnees.' _

Blake choked, having to put a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter. Weiss stared down at the note for a moment with a kind of flustered disdain.

With a firm stroke, she crossed out Yang's note, then wrote her own directly below it.

_ 'Schnee's Bees.' _

Now it was Yang who had to clap her hands on her mouth to keep from cackling. Blake doubled over, head in hands in lap, shaking with barely constrained hilarity.

"Team RWBY? Is there something  _ funny  _ happening that I'm not aware of?"

Yang looked up, fighting desperately to maintain her composure. Blake was still curled in on herself, laughing too hard at this point to breathe, much less sit up and face the music. Ruby, of course, was still  _ sleeping. _

And Weiss, beautiful, incredible,  _ impossible  _ Weiss, simply tilted her head and smiled. "Not at all, Professor."

Professor Gardenia's eyes narrowed. "Is that so? Then would Miss Rose please explain how the Valish tax system handles bounties awarded to licensed Hunters?

And without missing a fucking  _ beat,  _ Ruby spoke. "The normal income tax is cut by seventy-five percent for any bounty over ten million lien, in half for any bounty between that and one hundred thousand lien, and isn't collected at all for anything less." 

Blake and Yang had both recovered enough to sit up and gape at Ruby in outright incredulity. Ruby still had her head on Weiss's shoulder. She hadn't even opened her  _ eyes _ .

"Correct," Gardenia said. "And the reasoning?"

"Well, 'cause Vale wants Hunters to do more missions?" Ruby said, shrugging with the unoccupied side of her body. "More specifically, it makes it less necessary for Hunters to get civilian jobs to support themselves. It also encourages Hunters to take more lower-paying missions, since they're tax-exempt."

"Very good." Gardenia said, her eyebrows lifting. "However, I'm still going to have to ask you not to sleep in class."

"I'm not sleeping," Ruby said. "I'm just enjoying my girlfriend's shoulder. It's very nice, but I can pay attention too."

Yang's soul was leaving her body, Weiss was pink as a Vacuan sunset, Blake was in a hysterical little coma, and the whole class was looking at them like they were insane. Which, probably wasn't that far off.

Gardenia let out the kind of sigh that spoke of many, many years of teaching rowdy teenagers how to get paid for their violence. "Very well," she groaned. "As I was saying…"

Gradually, the class came back under her control, but Yang found she couldn't stop grinning the whole time. Weiss kept smirking as well, while Blake just tried to play it off between fits of giggles. Ruby tried to maintain the 'serious team leader' facade, but propriety had never been her strong suit, and eventually even she let slip a little giggle.

When the bell rang and things wrapped up, Yang glanced over to catch Taffeta practically carrying her teammates out the door. Hikari turned around once more to smile and wave, only to be grabbed by a pair of spectral arms and forcibly dragged from the room.

_ Definitely weird, _ Yang thought, right as Weiss grabbed her and yanked her into a group huddle.

"You dolts are adorable, but this  _ cannot  _ become a pattern," she said, her voice low. 

"I thought I was a scoundrel," Blake said with a smirk.

Weiss glared icicles at her. "Don't you start. As enjoyable as…  _ this _ is, we are at Beacon to learn to become  _ huntresses,  _ and I think it's  _ extremely _ important to take that seriously. I love you all very much but if our relationship begins to impact our grades I will be  _ quite  _ upset."

_ "Our relationship _ , huh?" said a voice that didn't belong to any of them.

They turned, and found themselves face to face with one Florence McAllister, leader of team FLRW, the remainder of which were also in attendance.

"Oh, hey Flo!" Yang said brightly. She barely even knew the fourth-years—mostly through Coco—but they were at least _acquaintances_ of hers, which as far as she knew was more than the rest of her team could say. "What's up?"

"Just thought we'd congratulate ye," Wister said. They gave a bright smile, shifting their wiry frame to sit on one of the desks. "Welcome to the Entire Team Club!"

It took a second for it to click.

Ruby sputtered something, waving her hands frantically. "What! Wait, how!? Was it the screen names again?"

From the back of the group, Lucia sighed and raised her hand. "Flo's semblance an emotional radar," she said dryly. "Apparently, you guys have been blasting love and affection at each other since the moment you walked in. Also, as a personal observation? You're just about the least subtle people I've seen in my life." She stepped forward, a smile settling over her sterner features.  _ "Anyway,  _ we know you're all team CFVY's friends already, but if you need anything feel free to hit us up."

"S-sure!" Ruby said, smiling a little too bright. "Thanks!"

"We'll leave you guys alone," Florence said, shooting a wink over her shoulder as they turned to go. "But, let us know if you wanna hang out sometime, 'kay?"

Team RWBY waved them goodbye, and there was a quiet moment as they all processed what had just happened.

Yang rubbed chin in thought. "Y'know," she said, "that's the second time in as many days that somebody's figured it out before we even had a conversation with them."

"Okay but that semblance is totally cheating!" Ruby hissed. "I know we're not subtle but  _ come on!" _

"Coco  _ did  _ say there were more…" Blake paused.  _ "Polyamorous Teams  _ here at Beacon. I guess it makes sense that they know each other?"

"And now we do too," Weiss mused. "This might just be the strangest form of networking I've ever encountered."

Yang laughed at the joke, but something caught her eye. FLW had left the room already, but their last and quietest member, Roan, lingered at the door.

He glanced up at Yang, a thoughtful look on his face.

It only lasted a second, but Yang got the funniest feeling that it meant something. Just like with Hikari and Taffeta, only… more, somehow.

Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter did NOT turn out the way I expected it to. At every stage, something new kept happening, but I think I've finally gotten it under control now. Originally it was around 6k words and had a whole 3 more scenes in it. The good news is, I have 3 whole scenes to wrangle into the next couple of chapters.
> 
> Also, we finally meet some OCs! They won't be stealing the spotlight too too much, but they're in there! For what it's worth, I've currently got a grand total of THIRTY original team names laid out for Beacon, plus slightly less than that for each of the other academies. Not that all of those people have names, faces, weapons, and so on, but I figured that, for a story which doesn't have to contend with limited animation budgets, it'd be neat to have a few more faces hanging around.
> 
> Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis, shockfactor, and juniorthib for the reads, and thank you for reading! I'll see yinz next time!


	11. Rising Tension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up that this is by far the spiciest chapter to date. Still no sex, but we're getting pretty close. 
> 
> (If you're severely averse to reading about horny shenanigans of any kind, you can CTRL-F "Blake found her eyebrow rising" to skip the whole scene. I recommend you read at least the first few paragraphs, since you'll miss some set-up for the next chapter otherwise, but please take care of yourselves. <3)
> 
> EDIT: Made some extremely major changes to this chapter. Please see the end notes for details.

The rest of the day passed in a pleasant blur. More and more students seemed to be giving them odd or knowing looks with each passing period—Beacon's rumor mill was a terribly efficient machine—but aside from team FLWR, nobody even so much as approached them about it. Even Cardin only gave them a resigned sort of glare across the cafeteria at lunch. If there was one good thing Weiss could say about the boy, it was that he'd finally learned that the student body's solidarity outweighed his own bigotry.

Their Monday classes kept the team separate for the most part, but they all met back up for dinner in the main hall. Team JNPR made an appearance as well, slotting into the seats across from them. An awkward silence ensued, until Nora started flicking chicken nuggets at Yang, who immediately started catching them in her mouth, as was tradition. Gradually, the atmosphere cleared. Jokes were traded for laughter, good food was devoured, and an arm-wrestling rematch was foretold for the following morning.

They all said their goodbyes and retired to their dorm rooms for the night, and for a moment things almost seemed normal. Ruby flopped back on the doubled-up bed, giggling as she watched some video on her scroll. Blake settled in on the other side and pulled one of Velvet's books out of the crate—she'd somehow changed into her yukata without any of them noticing.

Yang cracked her back, shrugging off her blazer and hanging it in the closet. "I'm gonna hit the shower," she said, glancing back at her girlfriends with a grin that sent chills down Weiss's spine. "Anyone wanna join me?"

"Ew gross." Ruby stuck out her tongue.

"I think I'm good," Blake chuckled, shooting Yang a fond look over her book. "Maybe next time."

Weiss was about to snark out some inane quip about impropriety and how showers could never cleanse Yang's dirty little soul. She was _ about _to, but then Yang's eyes found hers and her voice got lost in the headrush.

Weiss quickly analyzed the situation.

  1. Yang Xiao Long was asking her to join her in the shower.
  2. Yang Xiao Long was her girlfriend, and thus this was not actually an absurd request.
  3. Yang Xiao Long was very attractive, and would likely only be moreso when naked and wet.
  4. Weiss now had an image of Yang naked and wet in her head, and it would be _lovely_ to test her imagination against the real thing.

Decision made.

"I'll go with you," she said casually, catching a flash of shock on Yang's face. She stood, smoothing out her skirt as she went to hang her blazer beside Yang's. "That is," she added, tugging her tie from her collar and giving Yang a low stare, "_ if _that was a serious offer."

Blake tilted her head, ears perked.

Yang just chuckled, rolling her shoulders and walking off into the bathroom. After a last moment of trepidation, Weiss followed her.

"You're both _ grooooosssssss!" _Ruby called after them, though the way she descended into giggles afterward suggested she probably didn't actually mind all that much. Weiss still tilted back at the last moment, making eye contact and giving her other girlfriends a questioning thumbs-up. Ruby returned the gesture, and blew her a kiss for good measure. Blake just nodded without looking away from her book, a fond smirk and a slight blush clarifying her feelings on the matter.

Weiss shut the door behind her, and felt a flurry grow in her chest as Yang immediately began to undress. "You really are shameless, aren't you?" Weiss teased, leaning back against the door with her arms crossed.

"What've I got to be ashamed of?" Yang mused. She punctuated this by shrugging off her shirt and letting it fall to the floor, revealing a _ remarkable _ landscape of muscle tone beneath that wild golden mane. She reached back and unclasped her bra, catching it and hanging it over the rack beside the shower. "Gotta warn you though, showering together is _ way _ less sexy than the movies make it look."

"I suppose I'll find out for myself," Weiss said, committing Yang's shoulders to memory. She unbuttoned her shirt, folding it neatly and setting it aside, as Yang stepped out of the rest of her clothes.

Weiss swallowed, staring her girlfriend's _ very _naked physique. A sudden spike of anxiety cracked her confidence. "Hands to ourselves?" she asked, hesitantly.

Yang paused, still with her back to Weiss. "Do you want it that way?"

"Maybe the first time," Weiss admitted shyly.

"Then that's how it'll go," Yang said, turning to face her. She smirked, her gaze wandering down. "It'll be kinda hard not to look, though."

Weiss flushed, caught up in that increasingly familiar mix of affection and annoyance which all three of the women she loved seemed to inspire. She recovered, and dropped the rest of her clothes to the floor with a smirk. "That's quite alright," she said, going into an exaggerated stretch and observing the way Yang's eyes darkened with a little flare of pride. "In fact, I wouldn't have it any other way."

They stepped in under the water together—turned up nearly to scalding, which was how Weiss—and apparently also Yang—liked it. They settled into their various routines, and Weiss discovered the truth of Yang's words. As stunning as her girlfriend's body was, it was significantly less erotic when they were both busy scrubbing down. A companionable silence formed, more like studying together than anything.

After a moment though, Yang spoke up. "So Weiss, do you want to get lunch sometime?"

"Just the two of us?" Weiss asked, tilting her head as she lathered her shampoo carefully through her hair.

"Yeah."

"I'm not opposed, but… what brings this on?"

Yang shrugged. "'Cause I love you and I wanna spend time with you."

Weiss felt a heat that was entirely unrelated to the shower, and found herself unable to look at Yang's face—or any other part of her, for that matter. "Fair enough," she mumbled. "I need the water now, so move over."

Evidently the look on her face was _ amusing. _"Aw, is my little snowflake melting?" Yang teased, even as she got out of the way.

Weiss drew a little composure from the pleasant sensation of scalding water running through her hair and down her back. _ Melting indeed. _ She rallied, raising an eyebrow and facing Yang head on, hands on her hips as the water streamed down her body. "Is that a complaint?" she asked, and then, in a moment of cosmic inspiration she was too addled to stop herself from having; "You seem to like seeing me _ wet. _"

Yang's eyes bugged out, and she lost about two seconds to slackjawed staring before suddenly becoming very interested in emptying her conditioner bottle. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she mumbled.

Weiss struggled to hold her smirk, shocked by her own boldness and grateful that the water already had her skin flushed. She soon found herself faintly fascinated by the intricacies of Yang's frighteningly methodical hair care routine. She'd always appreciated Yang's incredible mane, but she'd never really given much thought to how much work it all was to maintain. It was yet another facet of the strange paradox of Yang Xiao Long; despite being outwardly uncouth, rowdy, and generally a being of chaos, she could be utterly and rigorously devoted with the things she truly cared about. Weiss was unbelievably lucky to have somehow ended up as one of the people in that category.

Eventually they swapped places again, giving Weiss a chance to start her own conditioner regimen. She fell back into her routine, her mind wandering as she set the bottle down and picked her washcloth off the curtain rod.

"You know," she mused, lathering up. "I really don't understand how you and Ruby can say 'I love you' so casually, and yet still make me believe it every time."

"It's _ not _ casual, though," Yang said. She gave Weiss a serious look. "Weiss, I've had a _ lot _of crushes on people. I know the difference between attraction and love. And this?" She tapped a fist against her chest, smiling big and sweet. "It's love. The big kind."

Weiss felt her hand drift to her heart, squeezing her washcloth into a tight ball, the soap running through her fingers. _ Of course. I question if she loves me, and she just finds an even clearer and sweeter way to say it. _

And of course, all this emotional intimacy was waking up the part of her that craved _ other _kinds of intimacy, the heat spilling out of her heart and catching the rest of her body ablaze. She found herself staring at Yang, watching as the water cascaded down her body. The image only fanned the fires, and once again she had to look away.

"You're making it very hard to keep my hands to myself," she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest and gripping her shoulders to keep herself honest.

Yang stopped scrubbing and slowly stood to her full height. "Hey, _ you _ were the one who wanted it that way," she pointed out, eyes lidded over a crescent grin. "I never said _ I _ was against the idea."

"True." Weiss took a step closer. Her pulse clattered in her chest as hesitation and _ want _ warred for ownership of the next thirty seconds. "I'll need to get under the water again to finish washing my hair," she finally said, lamely.

"Should we trade places, then?" Yang asked, eyes smouldering with barely suppressed smugness. She set a hand on her hip and cocked it. "Or should we _ share? _"

_ Oh to the silent void with this, _Weiss thought, as the last of her inhibitions evaporated. She stepped in, her washcloth falling wetly to the tiles as she slammed Yang back against the wall of the shower and kissed her hard. Her foot slipped, and with half a thought she conjured a glyph to brace herself, using the leverage and lift to slide her other leg up between Yang's, adoring the brutal, roaring heat of every millimeter of skin-contact as more and more of her higher thoughts melted to slush.

"Fuck, Weiss," Yang breathed between kisses. "You're _ gorgeous. _ I love you."

Weiss chuckled, running her hand down Yang's sternum. "So are you." She shifted around to Yang's neck, sucking a sharp kiss there, as Yang's hands twitched on her body. "And I love you too, by the way," she husked into her girlfriend—her _ lover's _ear. "In case I haven't made that clear enough already."

Yang laughed a breathless laugh, but she didn't pull Weiss back in, some clarity coming to her eyes for a moment. "So," she panted. "How… uh… _ far _ is this going?"

Guilt juddered through Weiss's body.

Her foot fell to the floor, her glyph dissipating as she reluctantly put some space between them. "I… think this is where we stop," she said, finding herself suddenly unable to look anywhere. "There's a lot we still haven't talked about, and… this isn't the time or the place to have that discussion."

Yang nodded, sobering up. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry if it felt like I was pushing you towards—"

"No, no, I pushed myself," Weiss sighed. She let herself fall back into Yang's arms. The embrace didn't burn, but it was still warm. "I just… I don't know. Our relationship is our own—" she gestured between Yang and herself, for clarity, "—but it still feels wrong to… take steps forward without checking in first. With the others."

Yang scratched her head awkwardly. "Yeah. I… honestly should have thought of that." She squeezed her eyes shut, wrapping her embrace more tightly around Weiss's shoulders. "Ah shit, I _ really _ should have thought of that. Sorry, Weiss."

Weiss didn't let the pause linger, resolving herself and kissing Yang firmly before either of them could spin into self-recrimination. "We'll figure it out," she promised, letting her arms hang loosely around Yang's neck. "All of us. Both of us."

Yang nodded, giving Weiss a soft, lopsided smile that made her heart turn to steam.

Eventually, they parted, giggling in embarrassed agreement that they should actually use the shower for what it was made for. The comfortable silence came again, suffused by the sound of falling water, punctuated by small talk and the occasional raunchy joke, and it was clear that the peak of things had come and gone.

Soon the water ran cold. Yang shut off the spigot and grabbed both their towels from the rack.

As they dried themselves, Weiss found herself drifting back through what had just happened, and her mind caught on an unresolved detail.

"For what it's worth," she said, fixing her towel around her body. "I think getting lunch together sounds wonderful."

Yang grinned. "Then it's a date."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look I'm not gonna defend that first scene, I just wanted to. Plus, it's the start of an important series of discussions, which will be continuing in slightly chiller (heh) settings in the future. Suffice it to say, though, that "no smut" tag IMEBG had maaaay not quite apply to this fic. I'll make sure to tag stuff as it happens, and give warnings at the start of chapters.
> 
> I'm also going to try to slip back into my twice-monthly update schedule, but I'm about to get very busy job hunting and trying to get set up for The Surgery, so it's a little unclear if how able I'll be to keep to that.
> 
> Thanks to Sgt. Chrysalis, FriendofYggdrasil, shockfactor, and juniorthib for the help and advice! And thank all of you for reading! Yinz are too good to me.
> 
> (As an aside, if you want to support me on Patreon, I've got one! I've felt kinda weird about posting it here given that I'm a pretty slow and inconsistent creator, but... well, I'm quitting my job and prepping for some frankly terrifying medical expenses. I want to make clear that I don't *need* the help at the moment, but if you're willing to chip in it'd mean a lot. <3
> 
> https://www.patreon.com/user/membership?u=18875998)
> 
> MAJOR EDIT: So, after a lot of consideration, I've decided to push back the White Fang arc by removing the Crime Kids interlude and reworking the second half of this chapter, which I'll be releasing as a micro-update. The subplot is still going to happen later, but I think I finally hit plot thread critical mass and it was making it difficult to write the next couple chapters in a way that felt convincing. I apologize for the confusion this causes, but this should give me enough time to wrap up some things at Beacon before things get wonky.


	12. A Small Inheritance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is a sort of micro-update, replacing the cut scene from the previous chapter. It starts off the same, but it's *extremely different,* and I encourage people not to skip it. Sorry for the confusion!

Blake found her eyebrow rising as she scanned the first book Velvet had picked out for her to read. It was turning out to be pretty basic, mostly a primer on the concept of polyamory itself. Which… to be fair, Blake probably _ did _need, given that she'd only thought of threesomes as a kink thing up until about forty-eight hours ago.

And even for a 'basic' text, it was surprisingly informative. For all the romance novels she'd read (and her… _ varied _past experiences) she'd never seen things laid out so clearly. Yang had taught her a lot indirectly about consent and boundaries, but having names for everything was helpful.

Like for instance: the fuzzy feeling she got watching Weiss and Yang flirt with each other was "compersion," and she liked it quite a lot. And the general haze of warmth that seemed to be following her around everywhere today was New Relationship Energy, or "NRE." She liked that one too, especially given that she was presently enjoying a big spike of it courtesy of Ruby holding her free hand as she fiddled with her scroll.

Still, on the less pleasant side of things, there was that tiny-but-growing lump of jealousy in Blake's chest that pulsed whenever she thought about the fact that Yang was _ taking a shower with Weiss _not ten meters away. She'd been a little surprised when she noticed it, but the book reassured her that it was perfectly natural and merely something she should talk with her girlfriends about. Not the end of the world, and certainly not the end of anyone's relationship. Which was good.

She'd just reached the end of the fourth chapter and was about to move on to the fifth, when she felt a soft pair of lips press against her cheek.

"Heeey Blake.”

"Mhm?" Blake made a show of turning an unread page.

"Hey Blake you're pretty."

She hiked an eyebrow. "Is that so."

"Yup!"

Blake fought back a smile, turning another page. "Interesting."

"You know what else is interesting?" Ruby said.

"Hm?"

"Your eyes. They're pretty. I've always thought the way that the light catches them was cool."

Blake let the smile through, looking over at Ruby. "It's a faunus thing, actually. Night eyes."

"I know!" Ruby's voice hitched a little. She sat up and crossed her legs beneath her. "I mean, mom had them too."

There was a long, long pause, as Blake quickly went back through every story she'd ever heard about Summer Rose.

Living with Ruby and Yang for three years, she'd heard many legends of the Great Slayer of Terrible Monsters and Baker of the Best Cookies On Remnant. By all accounts, she seemed to have been a wonderful woman, and an even better mother. (And if Blake suspected some of that was due to sentimentality and youthful myopia, she'd take that to her grave.)

And then, once, she'd seen a picture. A woman in the spitting image of Ruby, _ except _for one key detail.

It'd never felt appropriate to ask about it. Ruby and Yang's family had always been a long list of sensitive subjects. But… Ruby _ had _just given her the perfect opening.

"She was a faunus?"

Ruby beamed. "Yep! Wolf ears. Yang showed you the picture, right?"

"Yeah." Blake closed her book and set it aside. "I've… been curious ever since, but I didn't want to stir up unhappy memories."

A frown crossed Ruby's face, and she shook her head sharply. "They're _ not _unhappy, though," she said. "Mom… mom was amazing. I don't remember much about her, but I remember loving her." She settled back down, closing her eyes. "I was only four when she disappeared," she said. "But I remember thinking that her ears were pretty. For a long time, I… kinda wished that I'd inherited them."

Blake felt an odd twinge in her blood. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about that detail.

"But… that's not all there was to her," Ruby said. She sniffed, and rubbed at her eyes. "Besides, dad pointed out once that I carry plenty of other parts of her. Her hair, her nose… and her _ eyes." _

Blake found herself looking. Silver, prettiest silver, shiny and strange. It was another unanswered question—to Blake's knowledge, she'd never met another person, human or faunus, with eyes like Ruby's.

But as she looked closer, just for a moment, she caught a familiar flicker, a different kind of shine that sent a trill up the back of her neck.

"You have night vision?" she asked, stunned breathless.

Ruby nodded. "Just a little. It's pretty weak, and I don't like to make a big deal out of it. It's not like anyone would look at me and think I was part faunus, but… it makes me happy to know I carry that little piece of her too."

Blake couldn't stop smiling as they drew closer. "They’re beautiful," she said, simply and honestly. A little ache drifted into her heart, and before she could stop herself she said, "I wish I could have met her."

Ruby's smile grew, tears dancing in her eyes, and suddenly she blurred and crashed into a hug with Blake. "Me too," she said. "She would have loved you and Weiss so much."

Her whole body warmed with affection, Blake had a moment of impetuousness. She pulled her girlfriend into her arms and dragged them down together.

Ruby squeaked in surprise, then laughed as Blake peppered her with kisses. She didn't let Blake have all the fun though, pushing Blake back into the mattress and climbing on top of her, much to Blake's breathless delight. 

The moment was spoiled, a bit, when a muffled sound drifted out of the bathroom. Nothing discernable, of thankfully, but enough to remind Ruby and Blake of what the others were probably getting up to.

For Blake, it made the little ball of jealousy flare back to life—for Ruby… it wasn't so clear. Her eyes took on a distant look, her smile dropping away for a contemplative frown.

"Does it… bother you?" Blake asked between breaths.

"I don't know," Ruby admitted. She sighed, slipping off Blake and curling into her side. Blake responded by turning and hugging her, pulling her into a more gentle embrace. "It's… complicated."

"Yeah," Blake agreed. "But we'll figure it out, right?"

"Mhm!" Ruby smiled. 

A pleasant silence settled over them for a bit, and Blake found herself looking into Ruby's eyes again.

Then, Ruby spoke up. "Hey, Blake?"

"Mhm?"

"Over the summer, do you want to come visit Patch with me and Yang and Weiss? You could meet our dad, and… we could all visit mom's grave. And then… if you want, we could even make an extra stop on the way to Mistral."

Blake's breath caught. "Menagerie?"

Ruby nodded. "We could maybe even get dad to come along!" she said, laughing a little. "If your parents loved Yang, they'll probably like him too."

A giddy little feeling rushed up Blake's chest at the thought. "Maybe we could find a way to drag Weiss's sister into it?" she mused. "And your uncle? They'd probably fight the whole time, but it'd be nice, to have… the whole family together."

Ruby laughed, her eyes shimmering three different ways. "I'd love that," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So anyway we're back to where we were and we've got like 6 more points of canon divergence! Which, for the record, are mostly intentional. Yes, I know faunus don't work like this in canon. ;w;
> 
> Thanks to Sgt. Chrysalis, FriendOfYggdrasil, Juniorthib, and Shockfactor for reading this over! Go check out their stuff if you haven't already, it good.
> 
> And credit to FriendOfYggdrasil for Faunus!Summer (and incidentally, half-faunus Ruby)! As with a lot of other details concerning team STRQ, I'm pulling a lot of this from their fic I Will Not Scatter. We're not quite at "shared universe" level, but if you notice me doing something really creative and cool with Summer, Tai, Raven, and/or Qrow later, know that there's a good chance they did it first.


	13. The Bear and the Warlock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Tw for some anti-faunus racism and and an attempt at saying a homophobic slur.)
> 
> Minor edit: Changed Sufjan and Hikari's surnames for behind-the-scenes reasons.

"BLAKE I BELIEVE IN YOU!" Ruby screamed, bouncing up and down on the cafeteria bench and showering both Blake and Weiss with rose petals. Blake smiled at this, her brow turning to steel in determination. Meanwhile, Weiss casually waved the petals away from her sausages.

Across the table, Nora slammed her fists down on the table with a grin fit to make Grimm flee in terror. "Put her in the dirt, Renny."

The eight of them (which in this case really meant Yang and Nora) had decided that more than a single match would be required to decide the winner of the "Team RRAYNNBW Arm Wrestling World Championship." Nora, however, had declared that it wasn't fair to the teams to let the two strongest ladies have all the fun. There had been some deliberation (again, mostly between Yang and Nora) and Ren and Blake had been chosen as the next competitors. The teams' two quietest members had accepted the "honor'' with muted enthusiasm. 

Now, Ren's hand was steadily locked with Blake's, and neither of them seemed to be gaining much ground.

Jaune found himself getting lost in the details. While Blake had her teeth gritted and was obviously straining, Ren just stared back with a face like cut marble. He  _ was  _ struggling—Jaune could see it in the way the muscles in his arm and shoulder were tensed, the slight twitch of his eyebrows, the way he was precisely timing his breathing—but if Jaune hadn't known the guy as well as he did, he would have thought Ren wasn't even trying.

…Which meant that was probably how it looked to Blake. No wonder she seemed irritated. 

At least her girlfriends were plenty happy to support her through it.

"Kick his ass Blake!" Yang shouted as she latched onto Blake's Ruby-less side. "You can do this! And even if you can't, we'll still love you!"

Weiss took her time to finish chewing a bite of sausage. After a moment's pause to swallow, she halfheartedly raised a fist. "Go Team RWBY," she said. "Yay."

Ruby turned on her with big, wet eyes. "Weiiiiiiiiss—"

Weiss was a rock. "Ruby, this is silly."

But Ruby was a chisel. " _ Pleeeeeeease?" _

Weiss sighed, a smile now etched onto her face. "Alright," she muttered, before snapping her attention to her team's champion. "Fight on, Blake! It's best out of three! If you win here, the battle is  _ over,  _ and I promise I'll find some way to reward you for sparing us any more of this stupidity!"

Blake actually laughed, leaning even further into the match. "Under… stood."

Nora clenched her jaw with all the frustration Ren wasn't showing. "C'MON GUYS," she hollered at Jaune and Pyrrha, before latching onto Ren's unbusy arm. "Stay focused, baby. She might have three girlfriends, but  _ she's  _ still just  _ one  _ girlfriend, and she's not even  _ your  _ girlfriend!"

Jaune couldn't help but crack a smile at that. Nora would never quit being  _ Nora, _ and over the years he'd grown to really appreciate that. Most of the time. He raised a fist, pumping it in the air. "You got this Ren! We're with you!"

Pyrrha took a deep breath, leaning around Jaune to catch Ren's eye. "She's going to falter soon," she said resolutely. "Hold out until she starts to flag, and then show no mercy! You can push her back!"

"I'm not as sure about that as you are," Ren said, darting his eyes at the three of them before looking back to his opponent. "You're quite strong, Blake."

"Thanks," Blake huffed. Her arm glowed for a second, her aura flaring to reduce her muscle fatigue—which was a totally legal move, according to the referees (who were Yang and Nora, again) on the grounds that all of them could do it. "You're not… bad yourself."

Still, it was obvious this wasn't going to last as long as the previous bout. Neither combatant had a semblance which would turn the tide, but they also didn't have quite the same level of stamina as their rowdier partners. Eventually, one of them would waver; the only question was, who?

For a moment it looked like it'd be Blake, as her arm started to dip slightly towards the table. Her eyes widened in concern, and she forced more of her aura into keeping her place, but then Yang slid in close on her right side. "Hey Blake," she said.

Blake glanced frantically at her. "What."

"Dork," Yang teased, kissing her cheek.

Blake's face darkened a shade. The hands shifted, Ren losing an inch.

"Aw  _ dangit!" _ Nora glared hammers across the table at Yang, before sliding up into Ren's personal space. "Heyyyyy Renny."

Ren blinked, as Nora leaned in and smooched him too. "Thank you, Nora."

Nora smirked, leaning back against his side and crossing her arms over her chest. "You're not the  _ only  _ one who can harness the power of love,  _ Xiao Long. _ "

As if on cue, a floral flurry shimmied up to Blake. "Hi!" Ruby said shyly, nuzzling up to Blake's cheek. She planted her own little kiss, and stuck her tongue out at Nora.  _ "Power of love…" _ she cooed.

"Ye gods…" Nora gasped, her expression falling as Ren's arm began to give. She hastily clasped her hands together. "Napaal, lend him your strength! Maybe Rilg too! Uh…"

"You'll need  _ Dioxa…  _ when you're done…" Blake growled. Jaune had no idea what that meant, but Nora actually  _ gasped. _

"We've got him on the ropes!" Yang cheered. "Weiss, we need you to give us the final push!"

Weiss stared stoically at all of them. "No?" she intoned.

"But!" Ruby flailed her arms in Weiss's general direction. "But solidarity!"

Weiss gave her an incredulous look, as rock met chisel once again. "Really?"

Just when it seemed the stone wouldn't break, Yang brought down the mallet by wrapping her arm around Weiss's shoulders. "Solidarity forever, Weiss!"

"Ugh,  _ fine," _ Weiss crumbled. She rolled her eyes and shrugged off Yang's arm, but it was all clearly for show as she climbed off the bench and walked up behind Blake.

She paused for a moment, seeming to consider what she was about to do, before slowly leaning in and wrapping her arms around Blake's midsection. She pulled in close and whispered something in Blake's hominid ear, too quiet for anyone else to hear.

Whatever it was, it made Blake's cheeks light up like a solstice tree. The hands wavered—it was no longer clear who exactly this was benefitting, but the finale was fast approaching.

"Oh  _ muffins,  _ that's some real big solidarity," Nora groaned. "Uhhhhhh…"

"I think I'm going to lose," Ren said, his eyebrows lowering a millimeter.

"UHHHHH." Nora suddenly brightened. "I got it! Jaune!"

Jaune jolted halfway off the bench. "Wh—me?! What am I supposed to—"

Nora looked him dead in the eyes and said, with absolute seriousness, "You gotta kiss Ren!"

Jaune's heart leapt into his mouth, and Ren's hand crashed into the table.

"Nora!" Both boys shouted in perfect synch.

Nora grinned, sheepish but unapologetic, and Jaune felt a sudden rush of frustration mixing with the flustered haze and half-formed imaginings of what Ren's lips were like.

He was about to open his mouth and go off on Nora for pushing everyone's boundaries _yet_ _ again,  _ when he heard a beautiful sound behind him.

Pyrrha was laughing, so hard she was nearly doubled-over. She wiped a tear out of her eyes, and said, "I don't think we're quite there yet, Nora."

Jaune's brain crashed again.

* * *

"Look," Yang said, talking with her hands as they walked down to the airship dock. "I'm not saying they're all going to start dating tomorrow, but  _ come on. _ You can see it too, right?"

Blake rolled her eyes, shifting to bump against Yang's arm. "Maybe," she said. "But it's not our job to figure it out for them."

"Quite right," Weiss agreed, hanging off Yang's other arm. "What Team JNPR do with their romantic lives is up to them. We'll be busy enough managing our own time as it is."

They were between classes. Ruby had her Leadership Seminar with Professor Alizarin for the next two hours, and the others had filled the gap in their schedules with Professor Orlovski's Wilderness Survival workshop. The workshop was held in the Emerald Forest itself, which was quite a hike from campus. Thankfully, the school had helpfully provided transport.

Their conversation paused as they reached their ride; an older-model airship, large and squat and angular, painted in the gray, green, and gold of the Valish army.

As they arrived, the professor himself hopped off the back of the ship and strolled up to them. "Belladonna, Schnee, and Long, is it?" he asked.

Yang raised a hand. "Xiao Long, actually. And Weiss prefers if you don't use the surname."

"Mmm, 'pologies," the professor replied. He was a tanned and rounded man, barely taller than Weiss. His outfit wasn't flashy like most Hunters'—a drab green polo shirt and a boonie cap, along with a pair of loose-fitting cargo pants.

Yang didn't let any of that fool her though. Orlovski was one of the best Grimm trackers on Remnant, and she could see it in the sharpness of his eyes.

He scratched his bushy beard thoughtfully, looking back at her. "Wait, you're Tai's kid, yeah?" he asked, suddenly.

Yang nodded. It wasn't the first time one of the professors had mentioned her dad. "Yup."

Orlovski cracked a strange little smile, crow's feet crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Tell him  _ Wojtek  _ says hi next time you see him. Your dad's a good man." He jerked a thumb at the ship. "Anyway, hop in. We got a couple more students coming, and then it's off to the woods."

They climbed in the back of the airship with Yang leading the way.She  _ graciously  _ lent a hand to Blake and Weiss; both of whom rolled their eyes at the treatment. They sat down together, Blake on Yang's left and Weiss on her right. The bay was a single aisle with two rows of seats facing across it, and mostly full already—about twenty students all told.

A couple more trickled in, mostly people Yang and the others didn't know. Weiss did start making small talk with the boy next to her—a sophomore named Aoba she'd apparently met in a dust lecture she was TA'ing—while Blake leaned on Yang's shoulder, enjoying the moment of peace.

Yang let herself relax. Wilderness survival was something her dad had drilled into Ruby and herself pretty hard before they came to Beacon (and Blake obviously had more experience than the rest of the team put together) but Weiss needed the training and they could all use a brush-up. Plus, this was a scenario course, and Yang  _ loved  _ running scenarios.

The last few students climbed into the truck, settling in the empty seats across the aisle. Yang didn't pay them any mind at first, until she heard a soft  _ squeak. _

She looked up, and immediately locked eyes with Team HTHR's Taffeta.

_ Oh. Well. Okay. _

Yang blinked. Taffeta swallowed. Yang narrowed her eyes. Taffeta widened hers.

Hikari—sitting on Taffeta's right and apparently immune to awkwardness of this sort—waved cheerily. "Hi Yang!" she said.

"Yo, Hikari," Yang waved back casually. "What's up?"

"Not much." Hikari beamed, elbowing Taffeta in the side. 

Taffeta, for her part, looked distinctly nervous. "H-hello…" she said. She didn't follow that up.

At her other side, Ruth just lowered her head into her hands.

They were saved from…  _ that,  _ as Professor Orlovski climbed into the cabin, pulling up the tailgate behind him. He walked past the students, rapping twice on the grate that separated them from the driver. The airship grumbled to life, and slowly began to rise with a disquieting rattling noise.

"Alright, students!" Orlovski barked, his tone suddenly serious. "We're heading into Grimm territory. You know the drill: buddy system, weapons free, report in if you encounter anything one of you couldn't handle on your own." He glanced around. "Who doesn't have their partner with them?"

Ten hands went up, including Weiss's. And Taffeta's. Yang got the funniest feeling she knew exactly how this was going to go.

"Right." Orlovski's eyes scanned the seats. "Sakamoto, you're with Bin Athari."

Aoba and another sophomore Yang vaguely recognized as Sufjan nodded to each other respectfully.

"Ornstein, you're with O'Brien."

The first—Belka of Team EMBR, who seemed to be taking this class alone—groaned, while Ormond of Team ROYL sniffed disdainfully. He pointedly glared at the pair of spiralling horns on top of her head. Pretty much everybody in the car, including Orlovski, stared silent death at Ormond until he gave it up.

Yang felt a little frisson of anger creep up the back of her neck, even as Blake's fingers tightened in her hand.

Still, Yang didn't miss the quick glance that passed between Belka and the professor, and the tiny smile at the edge of Belka's mouth. Yang's opinion of both of them rose sharply in that moment. She'd love to know the whole story later.

She put it out of her mind as Orlovski went through the rest of the names two by two, quickly narrowing in on exactly what Yang had expected.

"Lastly… Nansi and Weiss."

Taffeta  _ squeaked  _ again, hastily covering her mouth. Weiss blinked, staring at her flatly, as Taffeta slowly lowered her hands and offered up a nervous smile.

"All set? Good." Orlovski cleared his throat and settled into that 'I've said this thirty thousand times to a hundred thousand different kids' stance that all middle-aged teachers seemed to have. "This exercise will assess your pathfinding abilities and navigation. Beneath your seats you will find packs containing paper maps, flare guns, and one camera drone each. You and your partner will be dropped at a random point around the Emerald Forest, and tasked with hiding your two camera drones at the locations marked on your maps. These drones are going to be used to observe the freshman initiation on Monday, so it is  _ vital  _ that they be placed in the specified areas and hidden well-enough that they won't be found and destroyed by Grimm.

"You'll have a time limit of two hours to complete this exercise. Once you accomplish your objective or the time limit expires, you will  _ immediately  _ retreat back to campus. Pairs are welcome to team up with other pairs, but bear in mind that this will force you to travel to four locations instead of two. Use the provided flare and call the class scroll line if you start to get overwhelmed. You won't lose any class credit for doing so—often, survival means knowing when to cut and run. If you see a flare go up, you and your partner will receive  _ bonus  _ credit for moving to assist. Any questions?"

Belka raised her hand. "Grimm forecast?" she asked.

"Category Three," Orlovski replied. "We've got a team of Huntsmen coming in over the weekend to weed things out a bit for the initiation, but for now assume moderate to high density. Given that all of you are at least sophomores, that should be within your capabilities to handle."

Yang found herself nodding along with the rest of the class. Category three was a bad, bad day on Patch, but it was pretty normal for the Emerald Forest.

"Nobody else?" Orlovski tapped his foot a couple times, then hit a switch on the wall. Compartments under the seats opened up, and the students quickly retrieved their packs. "Alright. First to drop will be Inariyama and Reynardine."

Hikari and Ruth stood up, hefting their packs with ease, and turned to Taffeta. "See you back at the cliffs, Taffy!" Hikari cheered, extending a fist. Ruth smirked, doing the same.

Taffeta lowered her head in embarrassment, but a moment later, a pair of arms appeared in the air above her shoulders, meeting the fists with two of her own. 

She watched them walk away, Hikari twirling her sword while Ruth extended her axe-staff.

_ "Cantríon ei cle'sai," _ Taffeta murmured, as they leapt into the forest below.

* * *

Professor Alizarin clapped his hands together. "So!" he began, without even a moment's pause. "Welcome back."

A murmur of greetings passed around the ring of desks. Ruby found herself smiling at the familiar faces. She'd initially been confused and annoyed by these meetings, but nowadays she found herself looking forward to them.

Twelve students sat in a loose circle of desks, representing half of the teams currently enrolled at Beacon. All of them were people Ruby knew, though the lineup had changed slightly since last year—every team leader had to take the seminar every spring semester, but the class was split in two—one session on tuesday, and one on thursday—so that teams could have a bit more flexibility in their class schedules.

Once they'd all had time to trade good mornings, Sæmundr Alizarin clapped his hands again for silence, letting his gaze sweep the room. And he had one  _ heck  _ of a gaze; his right eye was a high-end Valish prosthetic, a gold sphere with a glowing purple core, surrounded by a web of faded scar tissue that stretched from his nose all the way to his right ear.

When his gaze landed on Ruby, she smiled at him cheerfully. He'd scared the  _ cookies _ out of her when they first met, but… books and covers.

Alizarin finished his sweep and leaned forward, resting his chin on a crooked hand. "First order of business," he said, "by the time we get back together next week, several freshmen will have joined us. I trust you all remember your own first day in my class, and that you'll be just as supportive as your seniors were for you. We'll be giving these new leaders preferential treatment for a few weeks, but if anyone has any burning issues they want to bring up, I'd like to give you all a chance to voice them so we all know what you're going through."

Ruby bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully.  _ I should poooooobably get this out of the way early, huh? _ Before she could second-guess herself, she raised her hand high.

Alizarin cracked a slight smile, his eye seeming to glow a little brighter for a moment. "Miss Rose?"

"So…" she started, her neck ruffling at the feel of so many eyes on her. "Some people already know this, but Team RWBY… committed the unforgivable sin. Again."

There were a couple snickers across the room, most notably from Coco. "With style, too!" she shouted, earning an exasperated glare from Alizarin and an elbow to the gut from an obviously-still-amused Florence.

Alizarin turned back to Ruby, sighing and giving her a slow blink. "I suppose miss Adel's excitement is a clue to the nature of the sin, but care to elaborate regardless?"

Ruby grinned nervously, feeling her cheeks heat up. "Hey, it's not  _ that  _ bad! I mean I'm not dating Yang, so team CFVY is technically still worse."

She deliberately didn't add anything about team FLWR. Florence had never brought up her team being in a relationship in one of these sessions before, and it was likely she wouldn't appreciate someone else doing it for her.

Alizarin gave her a dry stare. "Well, we can count our lucky stars that Team CFVY still walks alone," he said. "You're well familiar with my stance on intra-team romantic relationships, so I'll spare you every single way this could end in disaster."

Something sharp cut through Ruby's smile. "With due respect professor? We're serious about this. We know how badly it could go, but we also know what we  _ want. _ " She leaned forward, gripping her desk. "And frankly? We may be young, but we're  _ Huntresses _ , sir. We're not going to wait for graduation to pursue our happiness, and I think you understand why."

Every drop of levity had left the room, replaced with somber understanding. "I understand completely, Miss Rose," Alizarin said. He sat up, smiling gently. "More than you know, I think. Therefore, as long as you keep it out of your academics and don't let it affect team cohesion, I'll allow this terrible sin to go unpunished."

"Aww, thanks!" Ruby settled back into her seat, looking around at the ring of faces. "Anyone wanna throw out any advice?"

Across the room, Cardin started to open his mouth.

_ "Except  _ Cardin," Ruby added, her voice even sweeter than usual.

Cardin chose silence, because even he was capable of learning.

To Ruby's surprise, though, a hand did go up. Florence's, actually. Ruby nodded to her.

"First, congrats," Florence said, smiling big. "I hope they make you happy, Ruby."

"Aw, thanks," Ruby replied, a little confused.

"Second though… Lizzie may be a  _ joykill _ —" she shot a sly grin at the professor, who clutched at his heart dramatically, "—but he's got a point. Remember that it's not your love that'll save you from the Grimm—it's your skill and your teamwork. Keep yourself sharp, and keep each other safe, and don't forget to lean on your friends as well as your partners." She gave Ruby a hard smile. "Your classmates don't  _ want  _ you and your girlfriends to die young."

Ruby swallowed, stunned by the intensity in Florence's voice. "Th-thanks," she managed.

"Well spoken, Miss McAllister," Alizarin said. "Any further advice?" When no one else responded, he gave a nod. "Then who else would like to share?"

Ruby found herself unable to focus much when Team BRSS's Bristol raised his hand. Something about the way Florence had said all that… there was more to it.

To Ruby's memory, Florence had never spoken this much in Alizarin's class before. Why now? Why about this? Because they were both polyamorous? Was that really  _ it? _

"Mister Arc?"

Ruby looked over in surprise. She hadn't even noticed Jaune raising his hand.

"I… guess Team JNPR also has some interpersonal problems to work out," he admitted. "Not, quite the same as Team RWBY's… ha, but…"

He sighed, and when he looked up there was genuine worry in his expression. "I'm concerned that my team is losing respect for me."

Alizarin blinked, eyes widening. "Oh? That's surprising news."

"Yeah," Jaune said. "It surprised me too."

* * *

"Belladonna, Xiao Long, you're up!"

Her girlfriends stood and hauled on their packs, and Weiss rose to send them off. "I'll see you both soon," she said, tilting her head expectantly.

Yang chuckled, and leaned down for a quick goodbye kiss. Blake rolled her eyes before doing the same, though she held the kiss a lot longer than Yang had. They sauntered off, and as they reached the hatch, Yang spun around on her heel and raised her hands to make a heart over her chest. She held the pose, grinning like the madwoman she was, and tipped backwards out into the air.

Blake covered her face in her hand, and muttered something that sounded like "love of my life," before stepping out to follow.

That left just four students and the Professor, who was standing at the front of the bay and talking to the pilot. Weiss, Taffeta, Belka, and… 

"Degenerates," Ormond snorted, staring right at Weiss. "And to think a  _ Schnee  _ of all people would be so fucking disgusting in public."

Weiss stared back at him. "Oh no," she said with a voice flat as the tundra. "It seems I've offended Ormond O'Brien. How terrible. Was it the homosexuality, the promiscuity, or the miscegenation? Please, I'd  _ love  _ to know which you approve of least."

Ormond just sat back, throwing his arms behind his head and cracking a sickeningly toothy grin. "All of the above, you stuck-up dy—"

"Hey, fuckwit," Belka groaned. "Girl could beat your ass into hotdog meat. Quit tryna front."

Ormond glared at his temporary teammate. "The animal sides with the race traitor. Who'd have guessed? C'mon handlebars, I thought we were  _ partners _ today?"

Belka's face split in a wild grin. "Oh, we are."

Ormond's confidence flickered, and Weiss was suddenly  _ very  _ interested in how the next two hours would play out for dear, stupid Ormond.

"Ornstein and O'Brien!" Orlovski called out.

"Aight then," Belka said, standing to her  _ considerable  _ full height. "Let's go,  _ partner." _

She led the way, pulling a baton off her belt and spinning it around to extend it into a long, serrated spear. Ormond followed her with his colossal greatsword, muttering darkly under his breath. The two leapt off into the forest.

And then there were two.

Weiss sat back down and turned her attention to Taffeta as the girl looked up at her. "He's a bastard," she said, her voice soft. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything. He… scares me."

Weiss found her heart softening at the sincerity in those eyes. "He's hardly a concern," she said, offering an easy smile and extending a hand across the aisle. "I don't think we've properly met, have we? I'm Weiss, though I imagine you knew that."

"Y-yeah," Taffeta murmured. She started to reach out her hand, but hesitated. After a second's thought, an arm formed entirely of maroon aura fuzzed into existence, reaching out and taking Weiss's hand. "Taffeta Nansi," she said, smiling faintly. "Pleasure to m-meet you. Properly, I mean."

Weiss shook with the constructed limb, a curl of amusement on her lip. "Likewise. That's quite a semblance."

"Oh. Thank you!" Taffeta seemed surprised, but her smile was growing. Her extra arm vanished, as she settled back into her seat. "I hope this doesn't come around as strange, but your glyphs are  _ fascinating _ . I've actually always wondered how they worked."

"Oh?" Weiss gave her a curious sort of look. "What did you want to know?"

Taffeta's eyes lit up. "Well… what do they feel like? Do you have to use visualizations or thoughtforms to generate the different effects? It seems like you have a really broad range of control and applications—a lot of semblances can be dust-enhanced, but yours is on another level entirely! Is it true you can use gravity and lightning dust to create localized  _ time dilation? _ "

Weiss blinked, trying to reorient around the sudden shift in tone. "Yes, I can," she admitted. "Though it's very difficult."

_ "Incredible!"  _ Taffeta grinned. "How does it work, is it just a basic temporal lensing effect or do you actually—"

"Weiss! Nansi! You're up!"

Nansi coughed, and the two got up and grabbing their packs. Weiss readied Myrtenaster, spinning the chamber and listening to it click. Beside her, Taffeta slid her hands into a pair of armored gloves holstered on her thighs.

They walked up to the open hatch, looking down on the forest below, shining green under the morning sun, almost too bright to look at after the dark of the transport. 

Weiss made eye contact, and Taffeta traded her a quick nod, her earlier awkwardness greatly diminished. It was a familiar song and dance, by now—no matter how a Hunter presented themselves in daily life, in the wild they'd often become something else.

Weiss idly wondered what kind of a Huntress Taffeta would turn out to be, as they stepped out into the open air and fell towards the forest below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! Big beefy chapter today (though not nearly as beefy as Grounded Lightning's 8k update from yesterday, which you should definitely check out if you haven't already!)
> 
> We're going into a Team RWBY do stuff at school" arc for a bit, because I think that'll be neat, and b/c I love to do the worldbuilding. More OCs! More drama! And yes, that was in fact a conlang. There's a spreadsheet for it. ;_;
> 
> Thanks, as usual, to Sgt. Chrysalis, juniorthib, FriendofYggdrasil, and shockfactor for their assistance! And thank you all for reading!
> 
> (P.S.: Extra credit to anyone who figures out what the mythological references for all the OCs are. Extra extra credit for Florence, because _I_ don't know who she is. ;w;)


	14. Fresh Air

"A cantri! A _ cantri _, amiidkhari!"

Weiss slipped easily under the Ursa's attempt at disemboweling her and rapidly thrust six times into its chest, silver steel parting black flesh with the ease of a needle through linen. The moment she felt it discorporate, she dodged through its smoke and spun to slice the head off a Beowolf that thought it could get her while her back was turned. Another Ursa tried to intercept her, and she rolled between its legs and gave it some new orifices for its trouble, before leaping up to land on a freshly-conjured staircase of glyphs and skipping up out of the melee as the horde bayed and clawed at her heels.

It'd started simply enough. Weiss and Taffeta had been coming up on the first location when they'd spotted some Beowolves prowling in the clearing ahead. Weiss had signalled a stop, and they'd hunkered down to gauge the pack's strength before proceeding.

Then, without more than a half-second of warning, _ something _had tried to take Taffeta's head off.

Weiss hadn't even seen what did it, but it smacked her clear out into the open, and Weiss had immediately leapt from cover to protect her as she got back up. By the time she did, the two of them were quite surrounded.

Initially, Weiss had been uncertain about their odds. She'd snap-counted at least thirty Beowolves including _ two _ Alphas—one of which had presumably been what clobbered Taffeta—and around a half-dozen Ursai. There was also a _ lot _ of noise coming from the treeline, enough for at _ least _twenty more Grimm. A pack this size could threaten an entire town.

Which was, after all, why the Kingdoms put so many resources into training Hunters.

Weiss stopped atop one of her glyphs and raised her Myrtenaster high. She spun the chamber to hardlight Dust. A blue glyph appeared over her head, beads of light spinning around the circumference. Weiss took a quick look around her, held her breath, and visualized the whole field of battle.

She wouldn't have enough for all of them, but this would certainly help.

She let go.

The beads became spears. The spears flew.

Weiss opened her eyes, observing the newly-rising clouds of black all around her. _ Twenty-seven. Not bad at all. _

She continued firing from above as she conjured a new pathway and ran towards the far end of the field, where the sound of percussive lightning was interspersed with—

"Ei khar! Khar, khar, _ KHAR!" _

Weiss felt her lip twitch upward as she arrived overhead. She'd suspected the shy and soft spoken Taffeta might turn out a bit more confident on the battlefield. She _ hadn't _expected the girl to make Yang's battle-rage look like play fighting.

The comparison had some weight to it, too. Taffeta ripped and tore her way through the pack, bare-handed but for the heavy-knuckled gloves that wrapped her fists, which turned each punch into a brutal electrocution. Unlike Yang however, she had _ four _of them, which made for a somewhat incredible maelstrom of blows raining down on anything within her reach.

One of the Alphas had circled round towards Taffeta's back. It started to charge, and Weiss launched herself downward. Skipping off a plate-sized glyph, she flipped around and slammed down onto the Alpha's back, driving her sword between its vertebrae. She jumped up again before it could slump to the ground, casting walls of ice to guard Taffeta's flanks.

Taffeta shot her a grateful glance, before letting out a roar and leaping directly into an Ursa's embrace. Latching onto its jaws with all four hands, she ripped its mouth open and materialized two _ more _arms, which pulled a pair of handguns from the rack on her back.

"K'kisha anaz _vaam_," she growled, and fired down its throat.

Not to be outdone, Weiss started casting waves of fire into the horde, quickly thinning the chaff. The other Alpha, stuck between an inaccessible aerial target and a whirling ball of lightning, bullets, and death, decided on the safer option; it grabbed one of its younger compatriots by the neck and _ hurled _it at Weiss. Weiss took the minion's head off with a single clean slice, only to find the Alpha leaping to follow. She took a step back, conjuring a battery of ice-lances, but before she could launch anything a screaming maroon blur slammed into the Alpha mid-arc. The Alpha yelped as it and its assailant careened off-course.

They both struck the ground hard, the momentum sending Taffeta rolling through the muddy grass. She scrambled back into motion, tackled the Alpha to the ground before it could recover, and wrestled the monster into a chokehold. With one final roar fit to match the beast, she wrenched her arms and snapped its neck. 

Weiss redirected her ice-spears to strike down the last few Beowolves as they tried to avenge their senior. A few wet _ thunks, _ and silence fell.

Weiss dispelled her glyphs and dropped to Taffeta's side. The girl was kneeling in the mud, panting heavily as she recovered. She wiped her brow with a spectral hand, before re-racking two of her gloves and both of her handguns and dispelling the extra limbs. At some unseen command, the rack folded up to lie flat against her back.

Weiss reached out to her, and Taffeta gratefully took the assistance in hauling herself to her feet. "That… was a lot more than I expected," she wheezed, trying and failing to brush mud off her overalls.

Weiss stared at her in frank bewilderment. "Yes, and you chose about the most exhausting possible way to deal with them."

Taffeta flushed and looked away, and Weiss immediately regretted her choice of words. _ No matter how she fights, she's certainly not Yang. _"…Quite effective though," she added lamely, searching for something to redirect the conversation. "What you were shouting before, that was Old Mantellian, wasn't it?"

Taffeta perked up, surprise quickly fading into understanding and mild embarrassment. "Oh yeah… of course you'd know." She shook herself, standing up a little straighter. "My family moved to Vale from Mantle when I was two, but my parents taught me the language as I grew up… along with some of the old traditions," she twirled a finger absentmindedly through her curly black hair. "And… well, war cries are a tradition."

A nostalgic pang hit Weiss as she busied herself with unfolding her map. "That's wonderful," she said. "I… was never allowed, when I was training in Atlas. Such displays of emotion are considered 'vulgar' or 'unprofessional,' by the nobility." She tapped a finger to her cheek in thought. "Perhaps I should get into the habit…"

Taffeta laughed a little, before quickly clipping it off. Weiss shot her a subtle smile, glad to see the girl's shoulders loosening. She focused on the map. By her reckoning, they were practically on top of the marker. "Help me find a large enough tree?"

"R-right!"

They walked to the edge of the clearing and quickly selected an old oak. Weiss manifested a series of platforms, taking out the camera drone as she did. It was a metal orb, mango-sized, with a camera on one end and an array of tiny thrust vents spread across its surface. A tiny smidge of gravity Dust lay in the center, presumably.

"Can I ask you something?" Taffeta called up to her.

Weiss found a crook in the bark and gently lodged the drone such that it would stay put for now, but would still be able to fly out when activated. "That depends on the question," she called back, stepping back down her glyph staircase and dismissing it with a snap of the fingers.

Taffeta scratched her head. "Ummm…"

She held that pause for a while. If Weiss had been a little younger (and a little less familiar with a certain rosy dolt's social anxieties) she would have raised an eyebrow or tapped her foot. Instead, she sat beside the tree and motioned Taffeta to join her. "We're ahead of schedule, and it _is _lovely out" she said. "We can take a short break if you like."

Taffeta tried for a smile. "That'd be good, yeah." She sat down beside Weiss, putting noticeable space between them.

The wind was a low murmur through the trees, and the sun shone lightly in the wild blue sky. The field before them was churned and scuffed and charred form battle, but even so she could see that there were flowers that had survived between the scorch marks and footprints. It was comforting, somehow; the way nature thrived despite the presence of the Grimm.

"So…" Taffeta started. "Your… girlfriends."

Weiss suppressed a sigh. "Yes?"

"How did you, um… how?"

"Can you clarify the question?"

"S-sorry!"

"It's alright, but I can't answer what you can't ask."

"Right." Taffeta stared at her boots. "How… did it happen? How did you all start dating?"

Weiss tilted her head, confusion blowing off the haze of mild annoyance. "Well," she responded, "Ruby asked me out Friday evening. I said yes. On Saturday, we decided to celebrate with a team outing, and we ended up admitting our feelings to each other that night."

"J-just like that?" Taffeta asked. There was something odd in her voice, something that it took Weiss a moment to parse out as _ hope. _

_ Oh. _

Weiss sighed and shook her head. "Not exactly. This weekend is when everything clicked into place, but that's hardly the whole picture. It took years of building trust, respect, and friendship to work up to this point, not that we realized where it was all heading at the time. And even with all of that, we were _ still _incredibly lucky that our feelings lined up the way they did."

Taffeta nodded glumly. Years of social conditioning had taught Weiss how to read people, and Taffeta's emotional landscape was about as subtle as a volcano. "Why did you ask?" Weiss prodded gently, having a pretty good guess at the shape of the answer.

"It's… silly." Taffeta tangled a finger in her hair. "And I barely even know you, so I really shouldn't be bothering you with my problems."

Weiss rolled her eyes. _ Time to be direct, then. _ "Let me guess?" she said, trying to keep her tone as neutral as she could. "You've got a crush on several people. One of them is your teammate Hikari?"

Taffeta nodded, her eyes cast down.

"And Ruth?"

Another nod.

Weiss felt a sympathetic pinch in her gut. "And you haven't told them, of course."

"N-no. They're… already dating, and they're a really cute couple, and I… didn't want to break that up. I… _ was _going to tell Hikari…" Taffeta buried her face in her hands. "…But then I panicked and told her I had a crush on Heather instead."

Weiss's lip twitched, as the last puzzle piece slotted into place. "And was that true, by chance?" she asked.

Taffeta hung her head and nodded. "I'm… such a mess," she mumbled.

Weiss sighed. _ Life shows us strange mirrors. _She reached out and laid a hand on Taffeta's shoulder. The girl jerked, surprised, but didn't pull away.

"Falling in love makes messes out of people," Weiss said, as gently as she could. "And falling in love three times over doesn't exactly make it easier. _ That _I know from experience."

Taffeta hunched her knees up against her chest. "I just don't know what to do. I mean… like you said, you were _ lucky. _ I'm… so scared they'll say no." 

Weiss took a deep, deep breath. "I can't give you much advice, but I will say… tell them anyway."

Taffeta swallowed. "B-but—"

"You're already in love," Weiss cut her off. "They might say yes, or they might break your heart, but you'll never _ know _unless you speak up. And… take it from someone who's been there more than once… it's better to know than to wonder."

Silence came to them, mixed with the sound of songbirds in the trees, finally returning now that the battle was over.

Not quite sure what else to say, Weiss shifted the subject. "So why were you so fixated on Yang earlier?"

"H-Hikari suggested I should 'make more gay friends,'" Taffeta mumbled. "And… I've always thought Yang's fighting was really cool, so Hikari thought I could 'get in' by asking to train with her."

"And then Orlovski paired you with me, and you figured that since I'm also obviously queer I might also have some advice or experience."

Taffeta blushed and nodded. "I'm really sorry."

"Oh stop that, you sound like Pyrrha." Weiss squeezed Taffeta's shoulder as she closed her eyes to think. "I'm sorry I can't offer more advice. Like I said, I've only been in a polyamorous relationship for a few days myself." She held up a finger before Taffeta's face was finished falling. "But! I know someone with more experience who might be able to give you some better guidance. Once this mission is done, I'll try and put you in touch with her."

Taffeta's face brightened considerably, though she remained somewhat wary. "Oh! You, don't think she'd mind?"

Weiss thought back to the crate of books in the dorm room, and the sweet little handwritten notes tucked into each and every one. "Honestly? I think she'll be delighted."

The faint crack of gunfire echoed from somewhere out in the forest, reminding them of where they were. Weiss made to rise, but Taffeta sprang up first, offering her a hand. Nonplussed, Weiss took it.

"I think it's about four miles east-southeast," Taffeta said, pulling out her map. Briefly, Weiss wondered if she'd imagined the emotional girl from a moment ago, until Taffeta hurriedly wiped her face on her arm. "We're here, right?" she said, pointing to the clearing.

Weiss nodded, slipping into the same professional cadence without comment. "Your reckoning matches mine. Let's head out now—we should have about an hour left; more than enough time if we up our pace a bit."

"Right!" Taffeta said, gathering up her gear. She paused, as she slipped her pack on. "Hey, uh, Weiss?"

"Hm?"

"…Thank you."

* * *

"Y'know what I love, Blake?"

Blake cast her eyes at her partner. "Is it me?" she asked, innocently.

Yang crossed her hands behind her head, stretching as they walked. She seemed to shine like gold in the dappled light under the trees. "Nope," she said.

Blake rolled her eyes. "Oh no, what a shame. Guess our relationship is a sham then."

Yang snickered. "Yup. Guess we'll just have to carry on with this loveless marriage until we die. Truly, ours is a woeful world."

Blake almost laughed, but a bitter little thorn pricked her throat before she could. She looked away from Yang, eyes drifting to the deer trail under her feet. "Do you… really think we'll last?"

Yang lowered her arms, her face falling. "You mean us, or _ us?" _

"I mean…" Blake made a big gesture with her arms. "The past couple days have been lovely, and I don't want it to end, but… relationships cool off. It's how it's supposed to go. I'm just worried it won't be sustainable in the long run."

"Well… _ we _ were," Yang said, with an artless smile and a hapless shrug.

"We were together for six months."

"We've _ been _together for six months," Yang corrected.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, and I'm calling you on it." Yang laid a hand on her shoulder. "We didn't break up to do this y'know. And if this poly thing does turn out to be unsustainable—if Weiss suddenly decides she hates us, or it turns out me and Ruby really can't coexist… I'd still stay with you, y'know?"

Blake felt a little sting in her chest. "Even if it meant breaking up with Weiss?"

Yang stopped walking abruptly, and Blake tensed, immediately regretting what she'd said.

"Blake?" Yang kept her voice carefully calm. "What does that mean?"

"Sorry, that… that was the wrong way to say it." Blake sighed, turning around to face Yang honestly. "Last night just… felt worse than I expected."

"Me being intimate with Weiss?"

Blake nodded. "I don't want you two to have to stop, but… I need to figure out how to be okay with it first."

Yang took a deep breath and focused intently on Blake. "Okay," she said. "Thank you for letting me know, and…" she looked away. "For the record, I'm sorry I did that without asking you—or Ruby—first. Weiss and I actually… well…" She blushed. "We stopped halfway."

Blake's ears perked up. "What? Why?"

"Well, we… kinda… felt bad about exactly this?" Yang shrugged. "I mean don't get me wrong, I care about Weiss a _ lot _ and she's _ super _hot—"

Blake found herself nodding at this point. Weiss was _ very _hot.

"—but you matter to both of us too," Yang continued. "And… it's hard to see the point in enjoying this thing if we're not _ all _enjoying it, you know?" She stepped in closer, hesitating before initiating any kind of physical contact. "I… honestly don't know what I'd do if you and Weiss made me choose, but I'm not going to just start fawning over her and ignore you."

Blake felt her a smile breaking out of her, and she stepped in to hug Yang tight. "Thanks," she said, softly.

"Of course," Yang murmured, scratching Blake's ears gently, just the way she liked it. "So… hey, let me make it up to you."

"Hm?"

"I told you me and Weiss had plans next Friday, right?" Yang asked. Blake nodded. "Well… let's _ all _ go out together before that."

Blake's eyes widened. "Yang, you don't have to—"

Yang shook her head. "Don't get me wrong, I still want a one-on-one date with her in the near future, but I think all four of us should talk about what that looks like first. You'll want to spend some alone time with our little Snowflake too, won't you? And Rubes?"

Blake felt her face heat up_ . _ "…Probably," she acknowledged.

Yang kissed the top of her head and let her go. "I'll ask them when we get back," she promised. "Now c'mon, let's finish this mission and get home."

They soon reached the spot marked on the map. A creek ran through a picturesque little glade, whispering over the rocks and exposing the roots of a huge oak. Blake tucked her drone in between the roots, concealed enough that the Grimm wouldn't notice. Grimm didn't _ seek out _technology after all, merely destroying it when they happened to run across it.

As she stood, she heard a rustle in the leaves above. She looked up, hand flying to Gambol Shroud's hilt, but it was only a bird. A crow, or maybe a raven, looking down at her with strange, red eyes.

Blake stared back, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. She kept her hand on the hilt, not quite lowering her guard.

The bird ruffled its feathers and continued to stare.

"Blake, something wrong?"

Blake inclined her head, and Yang noticed the bird, which had now shifted all its focus to her. "Huh."

Something _ was _ wrong _ . _ Blake wasn't sure what, but she somehow just _ knew. _

Yang seemed to feel it too. "Uh, hey buddy!" she called up to the raven. "You good?"

Blake hiked an eyebrow as her girlfriend _ waved _. "Yang? That's a bird."

"It's a _ corvid," _ Yang countered. "They're super smart. They'd land next to us and even play with us when she was younger." She looked up at the bird contemplatively. "Actually… Ruby always insisted it was the same bird. That you, buddy?"

The bird ruffled its wings again, shifting from claw to claw. It looked… agitated.

Yang's smile dropped. "Huh. A raven that hung out with us when we were kids. And it always flew away whenever dad or Uncle Qrow showed up."

Blake's eyes narrowed as she recalled the name of a certain ex-parent. "Huh."

The raven suddenly took off, fluttering up through the treetops and away.

Yang and Blake stood there for a solid minute, peering up through the canopy.

"Weirder than a three-armed snake," Yang muttered.

Blake snorted. "Weirder than _ what?" _

* * *

"Mister Winchester?" Alizarin asked. "You've been quiet." The 'as usual' went unsaid.

"Just got nothin' to say," Cardin responded, clasping his hands behind his head as he lounged with his feet up on his desk. "I think CRDL's doing fine."

"Very well," Alizarin sighed. The sigh was faintly echoed around the room—three years on, and Cardin _ still _ refused to talk about anything at these meetings. In the beginning he'd even tried to use the information other students revealed here to start trouble, but if there was one unwritten rule at Beacon Academy it was that you _ didn't _violate the sanctity of Leader Club. The upperclassmen had delivered that message with a black eye or three.

Ruby, personally still held out a little hope. Alizarin was maybe the most patient person she'd ever met. If anyone on Remnant could get Cardin Worstchester to spill his guts, it was probably him. Maybe someday.

"Right, well, how about you then Miss Adel?"

"We've got a little turbulence," Coco admitted, leaning back in her seat. She took off her glasses—the regular ones she wore on the rare occasions that her prescription sunglasses weren't practical—and started to clean them with a little cloth. "The CFVY machine is tough to maintain but we're all putting in the effort. We_ did _have some grievances come up over the break, but we're working on resolving them. Biggest issue right now is external: Velvet's really spooked about going to Mistral for the Vytal Festival." She scowled. "With White Court on the upswing, I honestly can't blame her."

A hand went up, and Coco waved them to speak.

"What's… White Court?" asked HTHR's Heather.

"Human Supremacists," Coco said, not even bothering to hide the angry glare she sent to Cardin's side of the room. "In Vale you hear about the Southern Pike Society. In Atlas you hear about Vox Humana. In Mistral, it's White Court."

"Oh…" Heather sat back down with a nervous frown. Her rabbit tail twitched, and Ruby's heart went out to the girl. 

"That's a difficult position to be placed in," Alizarin said, "and an absolutely valid concern." He sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. "For what it's worth, I believe the headmaster is planning to make an announcement after initiation in regards to the issue."

"He damn well should," Ophidia grunted, speaking up from beside Ruby. The senior crossed her arms—her rolled back sleeves revealing the beautifully-patterned snake scales covering her skin, along with the thick scars cutting through them. "I've got a few friends at Haven, and they're all treating the campus like a fortress right now. Things are _ bad _in Mistral, worse than the news says. I know I'm jumping my turn here, but this is all I've got to say anyway; OOAK isn't going to the festival, and if your team's got faunus in it and you give half a shit about their safety? You better talk to them now and figure out how to keep them safe."

She glanced around, making a point of lingering on a few human team leaders, including Ruby, who matched her eye and nodded firmly.

Ophidia was one of the only faunus leading a team at Beacon, and one of the most outspoken activists on top of it, to the point where she'd drawn criticism for being openly supportive of the White Fang. She and Ruby didn't get along super well personally, but Ruby still had a lot of respect for her and what she stood for.

And _ this _ was something they agreed on wholeheartedly. Ruby made a mental note to thoroughly check in with Blake about the situation before they made any definitive plans for the next semester.

"Thank you, Miss Jet." Alizarin cleared his throat. "Let's see, who else do we have… ah."

His eyes drifted over to the girl beside Jaune. "Miss Tudor? I believe you're the last one who hasn't spoken."

Rose looked up, and Ruby resisted the urge to glare at her.

As it turned out, being named after a common and popular flower meant that you occasionally ran into name collisions. Rose Tudor was the _ third _other 'Rose' Ruby had met, though thankfully she was the only one attending Beacon.

_ Un _ thankfully, she was the leader of team ROYL, and was a complete _ jerk. _

Something was… _ off _though. Rose didn't irritably brush off Alizarin's attempts at engaging with her. Instead, she seemed… out of it, staring off into the middle distance, chin on her palm. She nearly jumped out of her skin when Bristol tapped her on the shoulder. "Y-yeah?"

Alizarin gestured. "You have the floor."

Rose shrank back into her seat, eyes darting frantically around the room but particularly lingering on Cardin. "Can I pass, sir?" she said.

A quiet wave of surprise passed around the room, and Ruby doubled down on her focus. Something was officially _ up. _

Rose had spent her first two semesters at Beacon gluing her team to CRDL's hip, to the point that a lot of students already thought of them as a parcel. She'd apparently even _ dated Cardin _ at one point (which Ruby refused to think about _ ew gross _).

So the fact that she suddenly looked _ terrified _of him was setting off every alarm bell in Ruby's head. A glance at Jaune and Coco showed that she wasn't the only one who'd noticed.

Alizarin seemed to be picking it up as well. "Miss Tudor, I will also remind you that my office hours are open to all my students, and that I can schedule private meetings at your request, if there's ever an issue you don't want to discuss with the rest of the class. There are also a multitude of resources I can direct you to, if you should need them."

Rose swallowed loud enough that the whole room could hear it. Slowly, she sat up straighter, her eyes regaining a little of their glint. "Thanks, but… oh, fuck it all. Yeah, there's something I'd like to say."

Alizarin's eyebrows rose, and he gestured for her to proceed.

Rose took a long, long breath.

"First, I want to apologize. Last year I said—and did—some things that… well, they were fucked up. I know I can't take any of that back, but…" She paused, laughing under her breath. "Some _ stuff _ went down over the break, and it clarified my perspective. A _ lot. _"

Ruby gave up on picking her jaw off the floor. She distinctly remembered having to help Weiss hold Yang back after Rose slipped Blake a coupon for cat food at lunch. And _ herself _ having to be held back by Jaune when Rose called her big sister a few choice words in this very room.

Alizarin coughed. "I think many of us appreciate that, Miss Tudor—"

"And that's the other thing."

Rose paused, hands clasped white-knuckle tight, and said, "I'd prefer if you started calling me _ Mister _Tudor."

…

Cardin opened his mouth.

Without even thinking, Ruby said, "Cardin? We all know where you sleep."

Cardin shut his mouth.

The leader of team ROYL shot Ruby a grateful nod. Ruby… didn't quite know how to feel about that just yet.

Alizarin blinked slowly, the glow of his eye flickering out and then back in. "I see. Is there another name we should be using then, Mister Tudor?"

"Still Roze, but with a Z."

"And pronouns?"

Roze paused, for a long, long moment.

"They/them, if you don't mind."

Alizarin regarded thoughtfully. "I've had nonbinary students who prefered the neutral title 'Mx.' Would that suit you better than 'Mister' by chance?"

Roze's eyes widened. "I've… never heard that before. Yeah, that'd be good, thanks."

Ruby watched Cardin out of the corner of her eye. This wasn't the first time someone had come out in Leader Club—Ruby distinctly remembered the day last October when Ophidia brought up being genderfluid in response to Ember realizing she was trans. Generally speaking, there were always a small minority of negative reactions. Often, the loudest of these came from Cardin.

Right now, he looked… calm. Stone-faced, even. Which was maybe more worrying than anything else.

Roze cleared their throat, straightening their back and schooling their features. "Most of you can already see the problem. I don't expect my team to react well, but it's going to be a rough three years if I don't tell them. I'm… open to advice on what to do next."

Heather's hand went up.

"Yeah?"

"Tell Louis first," Heather said. She looked away from their eyes, biting her lip. "Please don't ask me why."

Roze looked confused, but seemed to accept the advice after a moment. "Aight, thank you."

…Which incidentally was the first time Ruby had _ ever _ seen Roze be polite to a faunus. _ What _ ** _happened _ ** _ over break!? _

"Anything else?" Alizarin asked. When Roze shook their head, he clapped his hands loudly. "Well, I think that brings us to the end of our session today. Mx Tudor, I'd like to speak with you briefly after class. The rest of you are dismissed."

Ruby drifted over to Florence and Coco as the students filed out. "So uh," she said.

"That was a thing," Coco agreed, casting a glance over her shoulder. "I think we should all be keeping an eye on Cardin for a while."

Florence and Ruby both nodded in unison.

With that out of the way, Coco turned her attention to Ruby with a friendly smirk. _ "Anyway, _how's the not-quite-single life treating you, squirt?"

Ruby grinned, flushing all warm and gooey with the reminder. "Pretty great!" she said, giving Coco a big thumbs up. "Thanks for the help, again."

Coco ruffled her hair affectionately. "No problem. You dorks are cute."

"So Ruby," Florence said, throwing her arm around Coco's shoulder. "Since you happen to be around, I wanted to let you know that we're doing a bit of a get-together on Sunday. It's just gonna be CFVY and FLWR, but we figured we'd invite you and yours since, y'know—" she smirked "—fellow sinners and all."

"Oh, uh, maybe!" Ruby thought about it for a second. "Um, sorry to ask, but… is there gonna be alcohol?"

Coco and Florence looked at one another. "There doesn't have to be," Coco said, her voice turning serious. "Is that a thing for you?"

Ruby nodded sheepishly.

"No booze then," Florence tapped a fist to her heart. "You have our word."

Ruby felt a big smile land on her face. "Thank you! I'm sorry if that's weird or whatever."

"Nah, it's cool. We all got stuff," Coco said. "We're probably gonna start at…" She glanced at Florence. "I dunno, three? Three-thirty?"

"Four-thirty," Florence said. "And we'll end it whenever people get sick of party games."

_ Party games! _ Ruby beamed. "Great! I'll have to ask everybody else, but it sounds fun! I'll let you know as soon as I do!"

"Sounds good," Florence extended a fist, and Ruby bumped back. "See you then, Ruby."

"Later squirt!"

"See ya!" Ruby waved. She headed outside, breathing in the fresh spring air with a smile on her face.

She had about half an hour free because of the way her schedule mismatched with the rest of the team's, but that wasn't enough time to get much studying done. Plus, it was a really pleasant spring day, and she was fidgety from sitting around inside all morning. A run along the southwest cliffs would be a nice way to stretch her legs and get some air in her lungs.

…Plus her girlfriends would be getting back to the southwest gate just about when she arrived, which was a nice bonus.

She dug her headphones out of her school bag and synched them to her scroll. As she fiddled with the music, she started off down the path to the locker rooms to grab her running clothes, and Crescent Rose.

You could never be too careful around the forest, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to FriendOfYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis, Juniorthib and Shockfactor for the read-throughs as usual! And thank you for reading!


	15. A Short Break

The steady thud of feet on packed dirt, the measured burn in her lungs, sweat and muscle burn, her aura thrumming in her blood, the wind rushing through her hair.

Ruby loved running.

And she loved the cliffs too, the wide expanse of the Emerald Forest far below, shining like its namesake in the late morning sun under the wild blue sky. 

She pushed herself harder, breaking into a sprint just for the sake of it, grinning. Then, at the moment when it felt like her legs couldn't go any faster, she let her semblance free.

She'd never really been able to find the words for what it felt like. One moment she was there, and then she wasn't. The wind rushed through her, touching every part of her and none of them. It was pleasurable, in the way that drinking cold water on a hot day was pleasurable. Her perspective was broader, panoramic, as if she saw not with her eyes but with her soul itself. For all she knew, that  _ was  _ how it worked, but in the moment she didn't question it, simply enjoying the feeling of embracing the whole world.

She felt herself come apart further, splitting in two, then three, then four, as she went ever faster—and then, as her aura dipped low, she let it all go. She spun back together, a little harder than she meant to, and when her foot returned to the ground she couldn't quite land her weight on it right. She tripped, pinwheeling her arms frantically and letting out a startled squawk as she fell and rolled a few feet down the path.

_ Ow. _

She sat up in the dirt, giggling and scratching her head sheepishly.  _ Whoops. Got a little carried away again. Glad Weiss wasn't here to see that. _

"Oh wow, you okay?"

Ruby looked up, face flushing as she realized she'd had an audience. She blinked, as two people approached her, both also dressed in running clothes. "Oh, hi Lucia! Hi Wister. I'm fine, just pushed my semblance a bit too far."

Wister smiled, and extended a hand to her. Ruby took it and popped her feet, crossing her hands nervously behind her back. "What brings you guys out here?"

"Just out for a jog," Lucia said, gesturing to the trail. "Same as you?"

"Yup!" Ruby beamed, swaying a little in the breeze. "It's just such a nice day, and my team's off in the woods for—" she took out her scroll, "—another fifteen minutes? I figured I'd meet them at the gates."

"Cool," Wister said. They stepped off the path, falling on their back in the grass. "I'm takin' a break, Luce!"

Lucia rolled her eyes with a tolerant grin, walking over and prodding her lanky teammate with her shoe. "Lazy." She bent down, planting a little kiss on their nose. "A break sounds nice though." She sat down, looking over at Ruby. "Care to join us?"

"Uh, sure!" Ruby joined them, setting Crescent Rose beside her and pulling her water bottle off her hip holster. She took a swig, her gaze drifting to the upperclassmen. If she was going to this party thing on Sunday, it made sense to get to know them, right?

Still, she wasn't quite sure where to start, until her eyes settled on the weapons at their hips. "Oh! Is that a collapsible bow staff?"

Lucia peered at her in surprise, before smiling and taking the weapon in hand. "Yup. This is Hawkwood," she said, and spun the baton-shaped device to unfold it into a staff taller than she was, with blades on either tip and a long steel string down one side. Lucia set it across her lap and invited Ruby to look.

Ruby nodded in admiration, shifting to look it over. "Wow, that's good metalwork," she said. "And I  _ really  _ like how the bowstring spools into the handle when you're not using it. What's that etching along the belly?"

"Runes," Lucia explained. "Blessings for battle."

Ruby nodded, understanding. It wasn't the first time she'd seen that sort of thing by any stretch. It was hard to spot if you weren't looking, but Jaune's Crocea Mors had similar markings carved down the fuller and along the back edge of the shield, and Nora's Magnhild was  _ covered  _ in intricate wards and symbols. "What about arrows?" she asked. "You don't have a quiver, do you?"

Lucia smiled, falling onto her back and pulling the bow to a half-draw as she aimed at the sky. Light flashed in her hands, revealing an arrow formed of deep blue aura, nocked and ready to launch.

Ruby's eyes widened in awe.  _ "Woah.  _ Your semblance?"

"I can make projectiles," Lucia said. Squinting, she drew her bowstring as far back as she could, and let the arrow fly with a twang like a guitar being strummed. There was a faint rush of wind, but Ruby could tell the arrow wasn't going nearly as far as it would if she'd been standing properly.

Ruby wiggled happily as Lucia collapsed Hawkwood down again. "That's so  _ cool!"  _ She turned her focus to Wister, grinning excitedly. "What about you? Show me, show me!"

Wister sat up with a relaxed sigh, taking a baton off their hip, much plainer-looking that Hawkwood had been. "Ain't nothin' much," they said, smiling sweetly. With a flick, they extended the baton out to about the length of their arm. They turned a little dial on the hilt and flicked a switch, and a hardlight axehead fizzled to life. They turned the dial again, and the baton lengthened further, the axhead reconfiguring into a spear point. ”Ain't got me semblance yet,“ Wister explained, "but ol' Bannockburn's kept me plenty safe these last few years."  


Ruby grinned. New friends  _ and  _ new weapons! "Oh that's  _ cool.  _ How many modes does it have?"

Wister crossed their arms. "I'm nae tellin' ye that!" they declared with a smirk. "But it's more'n two."

"So what about you?" Lucia interjected with a wry smile. "We showed you ours, why not show us yours?"

Ruby giggled, not missing the innuendo. "Just a peek," she teased. She grabbed her baby and stood. "This is Crescent Rose!" she declared, spinning her dramatically out to her full unfolded state. The satisfying clank and glide of perfectly oiled machinery rang like music under her fingers. "High-caliber sniper-scythe, designed for all-range combat." She stabbed the butt-spike into the ground and leaned dramatically against it. "Made her myself. Absolutely one of a kind."

Wister whistled, clapping their hands. "Now  _ that's  _ a gun. See, Luce, why's it I cannae get a gun like that?"

Lucia jolted. "Oh, uh, we can get you one, probably," she said, blinking. "That's… quite a weapon, Ruby."

"Thanks!" Ruby said. She paused, noticing Lucia's eyes lingering on the blade. "Something wrong?"

"Not really," Lucia said. "Just never seen her quite so close up before. Say, where'd you get the idea? Scythes aren't all that common."

"Oh, I based it off the weapon my Uncle Qrow uses. He's a huntsman too."

Lucia's eyes widened. "Qrow Branwen's your  _ uncle _ ?" she asked, sounding…  _ stunned. _

"Uh… yeah!" Ruby stared at her in shock. She'd met a few people over the years who knew her dad and her uncle, but none of them had been the same age as her. "How do you know him?"

”Oh! He's quite a big deal back in Mistral,“ Wister said. "So, Qrow Branwen taught'cha how to use that thing? No wonder you're so good with it!"

Ruby blushed and preened at the flattery, but… something felt  _ off.  _ Just like with Florence. Wister seemed trustworthy, but something about Lucia's expression bothered her, and she couldn't quite figure out what…

Before she could poke at it further though, she felt an unearthly chill run down her spine.

She had the strangest sense that something was wrong, that something  _ very  _ bad was coming up behind her and that the moment she turned around, it would  _ happen. _

She knew that if she didn't turn around, it would be  _ worse. _

She wrenched Crescent Rose out of the ground and whirled about to face the cliff. For a moment nothing looked amiss. The scene was peaceful, the breeze setting the grass asway, the sun shining down beautiful as ever, the smell of life and spring—

And then, out in the forest beyond, there was a color.

It rose into the sky slowly (or maybe the adrenaline and the aura rush made it seem that way), and then, at the apex of its trajectory, popped. A cloud of thick smoke drifted in the breeze. Bright, vivid purple.

The sound of the flare reached them, a high, keening wail, and all the blood drained from Ruby's fingers. She clutched Crescent Rose tight, staring at the smoke, willing herself to wake up.

Lucia's voice snapped her out of her daze, but the scene remained the same. "Is that… an S-Class signal?"

Ruby turned around, finding Wister and Lucia staring up at the sky in shock. Off in the distance, the distant sound of a Grimm Siren began to ring out from Beacon Tower.

"…Ruby?" Wister said.

She turned on them, her eyes wild. "My team is down there," she said, and from the looks on their faces, that was more than enough to get the point across.

"Need a little backup?" Lucia asked. She transformed her staff, jamming the bladed end into the ground to leverage herself to her feet.

Wister whipped off their shirt, revealing the scars on their chest and a wild mane of porcupine quills cascading all down their back. "We're on you, lassie," they said, and snapped Bannockburn in two to form a pair of hardlight shortswords. "Lead the way."

Ruby took a deep breath, and said "Thank you." She looked down and out at the forest, judging the distance to the flare. 

_ Guess I'm gonna break that old promise, huh? Sorry, Yang. _

"Follow as close as you can," she said, then flashed off the cliff and down into the trees below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one today! Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger again, but y'know how it goes!
> 
> Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis for the beta! I think they're the only ones who looked this one over, actually, but thanks to Juniorthib and SoulStealer1987 for coming up with a sneaky little detail you probably missed. ;)
> 
> And thank you for reading! Next chapter's gonna be kind of a doozy. I'll see yinz soon.


	16. Comrades

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TWs for "kids punching each other" and "severe injury," which are thankfully unrelated.

_ Five Years ago. _

"Okay kids," Tai said, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of their house on Patch. "Quiz time."

Yang groaned and flopped back onto the dirt. "Dad,  _ whyyyyyyy?  _ It's Saturday, I wanna go exploring!"

Ruby just shuffled her feet, not looking at anyone like usual. "Okay…" she mumbled.

"Hey, you two  _ said  _ you wanted to be Huntresses," Tai said. He smiled, but it was just with his mouth and not his eyes. "If you two are ready to go wandering off and slaying Twistjack nests, you're old enough that you should know basic Grimm classification."

"Oh my  _ god  _ dad, who  _ cares," _ Yang groaned. "It's just a bunch of dumb rules that don't even matter 'cuz Grimm are all too different to categorize."

Tai sighed, running a hand through his hair. "This stuff might save your life, kiddo."

Yang shut her mouth grumpily. She hated when dad pulled that card.

"So!" Tai clapped his hands together. "Do either of you know all the classes of Grimm?"

Ruby raised her hand, and Yang looked up at her in surprise. "Wait, really?"

"It was in the book," Ruby mumbled, her face reddening.

"That's great, Ruby," Tai said, but his smile was fake again. "So, you guys met some Twistjacks the other day. Can you tell me how they're rated?"

"F," Ruby said, looking down. "'Cuz they're only scary if they sneak up on you, or you don't have aura and you're slow."

"Yup!" Tai turned to his other daughter. "Now  _ Yang,  _ I know you've been beating up Beowolves when you think I'm not paying attention. So what's their ranking?"

Yang rolled her eyes. Of course dad would pay attention to her when she  _ didn't  _ want him to. "D."

"I  _ knew  _ you knew this already! And what does that mean?"

Yang picked a leaf off the ground and placed it over her mouth, before blowing it into the air with a sigh. "It means that they're dangerous to anyone who's not a trained Hunter, but civilians can still fight them and stuff, as long as there's only one or two."

"That's right! And y'know, it  _ is  _ really impressive that you took one out when you were only fourteen. Most girls your age couldn't do that."

"Uh huh." Yang's leaf landed on her forehead, and she grumbled a little as she swiped it off.

Tai's smile thinned. "Okay. Now can either of you name a C-Class Grimm?"

"Um, an Ursa?" Ruby said, looking up at her dad with uncertainty. He nodded, and she broke out into one of those wide, bright smiles that were getting more and more common these days, the ones that made Yang's heart feel like it was glowing. "A Hunter can fight them, but they're way too scary for me and Yang right now."

Yang pouted at her, unable to stop smiling despite her indignance. "Hey! Speak for yourself, I could  _ totally  _ take on an Ursa, no problem!"

Tai's smile went away completely. "Maybe," he said. "How about B-Class?"

Yang's fire dwindled a little. "Like… a Deathstalker?"

Tai nodded.

Yang pondered for a moment. "They're big," she said, frowning. "Like,  _ call more than one Hunter  _ big. I… don't think I can take one of those."

"And A-Class?"

"A Centurion," Ruby supplied. "Like Mr Legs!"

Yang and Tai looked at each other in a moment of shared discomfort. Ruby's plushies made her happy, and a happy Ruby was just about the most important thing in the world… but Mr. Legs was a little  _ much. _

"That's right," Tai said, as Yang shook off the image of the stuffed nightmare that Ruby insisted that they keep (and Yang insisted that they keep locked in the closet). "So if you find out there's an A or B-Class Grimm around, what do you do?"

"Um… go get help?" Ruby asked. "I mean, when we're older." Yang nodded, reluctantly.

"Yup. Never fight one of those alone." Tai's smile was real this time, but only for a moment. "And… what comes above A-Class?"

"Settlement Killers," Ruby said, her face grown somber. Yang's heart skipped a beat.

"Correct. S-Class, if you're being technical." Tai looked his daughters in the eye. "Remember, if you see a purple flare or smoke signal, it means that there's a S-Class Grimm nearby. If you see a purple one and then a red one, it means it's in your town. Now, what do you do if you  _ ever  _ find out there's a S-Class Grimm around?"

"Run," Yang said without hesitation. She sat up, crossing her legs. "Run as fast and as far as we can, right?"

Tai nodded. "Exactly. Unless you've got an army with you, don't  _ ever  _ try and fight."

Ruby fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I know this stuff is tedious," Tai continued. "But if you two are going to become huntresses, then you need to know the risks. This scale isn't perfect, but it'll help you make smarter decisions, and  _ that  _ is more important than any amount of skill or training."

Yang grumbled to herself, but she knew he was right. She wasn't stupid; she knew she was only a teenager and that she'd have to be a lot stronger to fight _real _Grimm. Even if it _was_ annoying… 

Ruby's voice was soft, but it cut through the silence like a bullet. "But… we  _ can't  _ run away. Huntresses  _ have _ to fight the monsters, or people will die."

Yang's guts fell through the ground.

She looked at her sister, and images of a rose-covered gravestone flashed behind her eyes. "Ruby… it'd kill us too."

"But that's what Huntresses do!" Ruby protested. She fluttered her hands desperately, looking near Yang but not quite at her. "We can't just leave people to die! It's not right."

"Ruby—" Tai started.

"Well, maybe _ I _ don't wanna die!" Yang yelled, standing up. Her eyes were burning, and her back felt all hot where her hair touched it, but she didn't care. Her thoughts were hazy. Something buzzed in the back of her skull.

"Nobody wants to die!" Ruby shouted back, whirling to her feet with her semblance, her eyes flashing. "Huntresses can fight, but most people can't! If there's a big Grimm coming, I wanna make sure nobody dies!"

"Kids!" Tai tried to interject.

But the buzzing blew Yang's thoughts right out of her head. "Yeah, well, I don't want  _ you  _ to die!" she screamed, and before she could stop herself she stepped forward and slugged Ruby right in the face.

"YANG!" Tai shouted. He grabbed her.

"Let me  _ go!" _ Yang screamed, kicking against him. "I'm not letting Ruby die just 'cuz some dumb civilians don't know how to run fast enough!"

Ruby pushed herself up, looking at Yang with tears in her eyes and a grimace on her face. "You're a _ stupid head!" _

"No,  _ you're  _ the stupid-head!" Yang felt her eyes and her hair flash, and her dad hissed, letting go a little. She kicked him in the shins and he let her go more. She ran up to Ruby, grabbing her by the front of her cape and hauling her to her feet, looking her right in the eye. The buzzing was getting worse, turning sour and sick. "The world's not nice like your books," Yang growled, tears streaming down her face. "The Grimm don't care how nice you are! They'll kill you and eat you and you'll be g-gone and I'm  _ not letting that happen! _ "

Ruby glared back, and spit in Yang's eye.

"EUAGH." Yang let her go, and Ruby tackled her into the dirt.

"I don't CARE!" she screamed, wailing on Yang with her tiny fists. "You're just a dumb meanie! I'll be a Huntress who saves people, just like mom was!"

Yang froze up, and Ruby reared back and punched her right in the eye. It was a sloppy hit, but it hurt a lot more than Yang thought it would. She cried out, and Ruby froze too as she realized what she'd just done. "Y-Yang! Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

Yang shook her head, dizzy as the buzzing finally faded, and looked up at her sister's hazy face. She had a black eye starting up. Yang realized they were going to match.

She also realized how stupid she'd just been.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. She reached up, and pulled Ruby down into a hug, her face burning with shame as she felt her baby sister start to sniffle and shake. "I'm sorry I hit you. I shouldn't've got mad."

"You're a meanie," Ruby mumbled into her shirt.

"I'm a meanie, yeah," Yang sighed, realizing it was true. "I'm a big ol' meanie beanie."

Ruby stopped crying, and let out a little giggle. "Hehe… meanie beanie…"

Yang chuckled a little too, and she realized that her dad was sitting beside them. She looked up at him, and saw how tired he looked. "Um, sorry dad."

Tai looked at her with that distant, sad expression he wore when he got stuck in his head and didn't know what to do or what to say. It was happening a lot less these days, but Yang realized she'd made it happen this time, and she felt a hole open up in her chest. She reached out to him and took his hand, using the other to brush through Ruby's hair.

"I'm not gonna fight any Settlement Killers," Ruby mumbled. "Not till I'm bigger n' stronger than dad. I don't wanna die either, I promise. I just wanna save people."

Yang hugged her sister tight. "I know sis. I'm sorry."

Ruby sniffed. "I love you."

A sob slipped its way out from Yang's throat, and she hugged her sister as hard as she could. "I love you too."

Gently, Tai gathered them both up in his arms, and they sat there in the dirt, holding onto the family they had left.

* * *

_ Present Time _

How strange, the way love could change your perspective.

Yang's heart had never beat so hard in her life as she ran through the forest towards the pillar of purple smoke hanging in the sky. Blake was close by her side, her eyes wild and panicked as she gripped Gambol Shroud in white-knuckled fingers.

Every instinct in Yang's body screamed at her to send Blake  _ away.  _ Invent some excuse to get her to  _ leave  _ and be  _ anywhere but here,  _ but instead she just kept running.

It was funny! It really was, even if she didn't have the breath to laugh through her terror, but the thing that kept her going was the image of Weiss fighting alone. Their defiant Ice Queen wouldn't run. Yang knew it down to her bones, and she was sure Blake did too.

_ If it takes an army to beat a Settlement Killer, then I guess we'll just have to be that army. Together. _

Their scrolls finally blipped to life, and a voice rang out clear in their earpieces.  _ "Sufjan here! We broke away from the thing, but it's closing in on us! We were setting one of the drones in some ruins when it just burst out! It's… some kind of huge octopus!" _

The words drained all the blood from Yang's face. She stumbled as the ground suddenly shook under her feet, tripping and landing hard on her shoulder.

"Yang!" Blake skidded to a stop and ran to her side. "What happened?"

The ground shook again, and Sufjan's voice came back.

_ "It's moving too fast, please—shit, Ao, get—AH—" _

The scream rang out not far ahead of them, and Yang scrambled to her feet and broke into a mad sprint. She tapped her earpiece, speaking quickly. "Sufjan just described an Atkorock. Teach,  _ call the school. _ Sufi, Blake and I are twenty seconds out, just hold on!"

_ "It's got my leg! It's—" _

Yang and Blake broke the treeline just in time to see a colossal tentacle twist Sufjan's leg off.

* * *

They'd been halfway back to the gate when they heard the flare, but there'd been no hesitation for either of them. By the time Weiss and Taffeta arrived, the battle was already in full swing.

Taffeta had heard the words "Atkorock" in class before, but she'd  _ never  _ thought she'd see one in the flesh. They were the monsters that killed Mountain Glen, the reason children were told never to explore the caves of southern Vale.

Seeing one in person was worse than the stories.

The body was out of sight, but tentacles thick as tree trunks whipped through the forest with terrific force, shattering trunks and churning great gulfs through the mud and rocks. There were a dozen of them, each one covered in bony hooks and barbs that flexed and writhed with every motion. Red eyes dotted the tentacles at irregular intervals, gleaming with familiar malice and unnerving intelligence.

There were four students on the field so far: Belka, Yang, Aoba, and Ormond, and they were each doing the best they could to just stay alive.

At the top of a small hill twenty meters back, Sufjan lay on the ground with his right leg propped up against a large oak, breathing heavily as Blake desperately wrapped a tourniquet around… what used to be his left leg.

Weiss ran up to them, dropping to her knees in a skid and examining the stump. "Do you need help?"

"I've got it," Blake said curtly. She finished tightening the dressing and laid her hand on it, her aura faintly flaring as she activated the ice dust woven into the gauze. "That should do for now," She jerked her thumb towards the fighting. "But  _ they  _ need support, ASAP." 

Weiss turned, fixing Taffeta with a cold and calculating look. "Taffeta, do you think you can fight that thing?"

Taffeta swallowed, glancing around the tree at the chaos beyond. "N-no. I'm best at horde fighting. L-large targets like that give me trouble."

Blake spoke without looking up. "Do you have medical training?"

Taffeta nodded.

"Then switch with me."

Running footsteps approached, and suddenly Yang was there, holding—

Taffeta flinched, but steeled herself as she reached out and took Sufjan's severed leg. She conjured another pair of arms to fish out her map and laid it on the ground so she could keep the wound out of the dirt, while another pair pulled out her medical kit so she could start wrapping the limb in fresh gauze.

Blake nodded appreciatively, glancing at the boy's pale face. "Sufjan, are you feeling okay?"

Sufjan gestured emphatically at his newly-bandaged stump. "Gee, I dunno doc, do I  _ look  _ okay to you!?"

"Being well enough to complain is a good sign." Weiss smiled, patting the boy on the arm. "We're passing you over to Taffeta. Taffeta? Take care of him." She stood, and Blake stood with her, joining Yang.

The three of them hesitated only for the briefest instant, before rushing back into the fray.

Taffeta swallowed, returning her focus to the boy in front of her. He smiled weakly, looking down at the leg she'd wrapped up. "Can I hold that?" he asked.

Not quite sure what to do, Taffeta gave him the leg.

Sufjan set it on his lap. He patted it twice. "There there little buddy, it's gonna be all right," he said. "Wow, Teal's gonna have a real leg up in next week's dance competition, huh?"

Taffeta suppressed an incredulous giggle, and Sufjan shot her an appreciative smirk. He wasn't someone she knew, really. A fourth year, member of team FRNS. Almost a stranger.

Still, he was a comrade, and his life was in her hands.

"It looks like your aura is stabilizing you," she murmured, taking out her scroll and scanning him just to be sure. She quickly typed out some notes, including approximate times of injury and treatment. "Let me know if you start to feel dizzy or faint, and keep your g-good leg elevated."

"Hey!" Sufjan protested. "Both my legs are good legs. This here—" he hefted the bundle in his arms, "—this is a great leg. Maybe my new favorite leg." The ground shook, and he winced through his smile. "Yeah, okay, I gotcha. Sorry, the jokes help with the pain."

"Oh  _ god…" _

Taffeta and Sufjan looked up, finding Hikari standing there in shock. Her pale gray eyes were wide, her teeth caught on her lip. She looked from the wound to Taffeta, and then Ruth muscled past her to check on the boy.

"You'll be fine," Ruth said, gruffly, examining Blake's work. "The break looks bad, but with aura, surgery, and luck you'll get your leg back." She looked up at the ongoing battle as Sufjan's attempt at a quip was drowned out by a bellowing wail that rattled the trees all around them.

Then, to Taffeta's shock, Ruth turned and pulled her into a powerful hug. Taffeta let out a faint squeak, hugging back with all her might.

Ruth rarely touched her outside of sparring or battle. Not even in passing. But at that moment she felt… solid.  _ Real. _

"Keep him safe till it's over," Ruth said, releasing her and meeting her eye to eye. Orange like the brightest sunsets. "Got it, Taff?"

Taffeta's chest felt tight. "R-right!"

Ruth smiled, and then took off, leaving Hikari and Taffeta behind with Sufjan.

Taffeta swallowed, standing on shaky feet to better watch for minor Grimm sneaking through the trees towards them. "Kari, you should go too. Y-your sword, they'll need—"

She wasn't prepared for Hikari to walk up and kiss her. 

It only lasted a second, but the force left no ambiguity, and when it was done, Taffeta found herself cupping Hikari's cheek like she held the sun itself.

"K… Khar'atai," Taffeta begged, in a rush of emotion so desperate she forgot to make sure she was understood. "Khar'a—don't die. Please, please, please don't die, Kari." 

"You neither," Hikari said, smiling bright with tears glittering all down her face. She pulled away, whipping Mikazuki off her back and triggering its secondary mode, an arc of hardlight dust forming to extend the curved katana into something that could slay giants. "I love you, Taffy. Let's talk about that when we get back, kay?"

Taffeta nodded silently, and watched her comrades rush into battle.

"Damn," Sufjan murmured. "You are one lucky lady."

"Yeah," Taffeta clutched a hand to her chest as joy and fear ran freely down her cheeks. "I am. I really am."

Clasping her hands together, she prayed, harder than she'd ever prayed before. "Cantríon, cantríon, dai'kor cle'sai…"

_ By the Song of Songs, be safe my loves. _

* * *

Blake remembered playing with octopi in her youth, in the tide pools of Menagerie and southern Anima. She recalled being fascinated by how they moved so fluidly, and how their almost-alien eyes held a strangely familiar spark of intelligence and curiosity.

This was nothing like that.

She grit her teeth as her double was smashed into nothingness a hair's breadth behind her. She spun and slashed, but the tentacle just took the hit and twisted to curl around her legs, forcing her to leap straight up to avoid being snared.

On her right, Yang threw punch after punch into two of the huge black limbs, forcing them back centimeter by bloody centimeter and leaving huge gouges and craters in the flesh. On her left, Ormond held his ground against a tentacle of his own, slashing and parrying as fast as his greatsword would swing. Belka leapt in and out beside him, striking with a spear whose tip crackled with wild electric fire and made the Grimm's flesh bubble and pop where she struck.

They were making little progress. The Atkorock was keeping its body out of sight, using the length of its arms to strike at the students through the forest. Worse, it seemed to be regenerating where they hit it—even the thickest severed tentacles just retreated back into the woods and were replaced a moment later. The students, by contrast, were firmly limited in how fast they could recharge their aura. Aoba was already out of the fight, having made heavy use of his semblance getting Sufjan to safety.

Things were dire, but the students had one advantage.

Weiss.

She stood in the air amidst an array of dozens of glyphs, her sword raised as thick lances of ice formed in each one. With a flick of her wrist, she let them fly, each one stabbing deep into the Grimm's arms and pinning them to the dirt.

Blake whipped her kusarigama out to loop around one of the spears near Yang and used it to hurl herself across the field. She swung her cleaver as she landed, carving deep into the Grimm's flesh and earning another unholy screech.

She heard a yelp of triumph, and saw that Ormond had cut clean through one of the tentacles, which was disintegrating before him. The boy laughed wildly, his long hair matted with sweat, and didn't see the tentacle coiling to strike from above.

Blake gritted her teeth and hurled her ribbon, wrapping it around his waist and  _ heaving. _ The boy cried out as he suddenly went flying, and then screamed as tons of Grimm flesh, bone, and teeth impacted the ground he'd just occupied. The Atkorock wasn't satisfied though, and another tentacle lashed out, it's barbed side coiling around his chest.

For a moment, Blake thought she was about to watch the boy get ripped in half, or that she'd have to abandon her weapon to not get pulled to death herself. Then Belka's spear came hurtling into view, slamming into the tentacle and exploding in a blinding burst of lightning and fury that severed it completely. The tentacle spasmed, and the half constricting Ormond evaporated, leaving the boy dazed and covered in dozens of tiny lacerations but  _ alive  _ as Blake hauled him bodily out of the fray.

He groaned as she dragged him to the treeline. "Hey, f-fuck off kitty kat, I can still… guh."

"Yeah, no you can't," she hissed, ears folding back against her head. She leaned in, fixing Ormond's pasty white face with a glare sharp enough to cut through steel. " _ You're _ just lucky your partner and I care more about your life than your politics. Now stay down and get your aura back so we can all kill this abomination and live to see the sunset."

She didn't wait for an answer, but from the expression she left him with, she figured he got the message.

She ran back in, just in time to tackle Belka out of the way of another sweeping strike, sending them both rolling in the dirt. "Is the fuckboy safe?" Belka shouted.

Blake scrambled out of the way of another coiling smash. "He'll live!" she shouted back. "Just focus on stopping this thing!"

Belka gave her a grim look that Blake couldn't help but agree with.

There was a shout behind them. Blake chanced a look, and found Hikari and Ruth charging out of the treeline at a full sprint. Ruth had an axe in each hand, her teeth bared to reveal sharp fox canines, while Hikari had her dust katana held upright.

Hikari let out a roaring war-cry, her sword igniting brighter in her hand. She dashed past Blake and swung her blade in a low arc, carving a flaming trough in the earth and then bringing it up to sever a tentacle mid-sweep. The hardlight edge set the severed pieces aflame.

Not to be outdone, Ruth hurled one of her axes, embedding it in another tentacle. She held out her arm, a light on her bracer glowing purple, and the axe yanked itself free and returned to her hand. For a moment it seemed like it had only done superficial damage, but then a purple glow flashed in the cut, and the Grimm flesh suddenly warped and imploded, crushing and twisting together. Ruth's snarl turned to a feral grin, as she ejected the spent gravity dust cartridge and ran to join the melee.

Around the field, other students started to appear as well, until nearly the whole of Orlovski's class were present. Emboldened, Belka rejoined the fight, while Blake broke off to support her partner.

Yang was a pillar of unshakable fire, her body visibly thrumming with stored-up power. She fired a few shots to decimate one of the smaller tentacles, then ducked a large one on a sweep. The tentacle snaked around a fallen tree trunk and tried to swing it at Yang's back like a club, but, but Blake quickly slid in and severed it, sending the log crashing into the mud. 

The two of them slipped into a perfect rhythm, like they'd done dozens of times before.

"My semblance is fully charged!" Yang yelled as she threw a fiery punch. Her hair was faintly burning, her eyes tinged red as the stored up power fought to escape her. "I think I can cripple it, but I need to get close to the body!"

"How are we going to do that?" Blake asked.

But before Yang could answer, another arm whipped out of the forest. Something was wrong, though—the arm didn't hug the ground, or curve to smash into anyone on the field. It arced high, seemingly sweeping the treetops, as if it was after an aerial target—

_ "WEISS!" _

* * *

Ruby ran harder than she'd ever run in her life, petals flying in her wake as popped in and out of her semblance, pushing it as far as it would go. She could feel the ground shaking from the violence ahead, and as she crashed through a thicket she spotted motion through the gaps in the trees. 

So close. She was  _ so close. _

She broke the treeline.

And there was Yang, hammering and screaming away like the burning sun she was. Blake, at her side, subtle and nimble and furiously alive as she guarded Yang's flanks. And Weiss, beautiful Weiss, like a star above them all, raining ice and fire and pain upon the Grimm.

And then a black arc swept up to swat that star out of the sky.

There was no time to think, to plan, to feel. Ruby flashed into her semblance, rushing up into the air. Weiss had seen the arm, and was conjuring glyphs in an attempt to blunt the strike.

Ruby knew how strong Weiss's glyphs were. An impact from a Grimm that large moving that fast would shatter them instantly. It would shatter Weiss, too.

There was no choice to make.

Ruby threw herself into its path, her scythe raised high. Her angle was bad, and the arm was too thick, its teeth and eyes drinking up her hatred in the milliseconds before impact.

Ruby grit her teeth.

_ You  _ ** _won't _ ** _ take her from us! Not today, not like this, and not while I'm still alive! _

She swung her scythe, and her eyes began to  _ burn. _

* * *

It all happened in an instant.

Weiss braced herself instinctively, even as the hole in her chest told her she wouldn't survive. It would have been nice and poetic to say her life flashed before her eyes, but it was a simpler and shorter vision, in black, yellow, and—

Red.

Because suddenly, inexplicably, Ruby was  _ there,  _ screaming with her scythe raised and roses swirling all around her. 

Weiss would later swear she imagined it, but in that moment she had the funniest sense that the Grimm looked  _ surprised. _

And then, the world went white. 

The light was cold, like a mirror left out in the snow. It rang like music in Weiss's ears, like a song she'd heard long ago but then forgotten, something elegant and fundamental.

She felt it rush through her, and like windchimes her body began to sing along with it, her aura catching on the light and drinking it in. Sating a hunger she hadn't realized she possessed.

And then, quickly as it came, the light was gone.

Her glyphs vanished, and Weiss dropped to the ground. She blinked frantically to clear her vision while she tried to comprehend the strange sensation, only to find Ruby lying motionless in the mud.

Panic cracked a faultline through her chest and swallowed all other cares. She ran to her love's side, sliding onto her knees. "Ruby, please, please get up—"

She touched Ruby's shoulder, and Ruby twitched. "Owwwwww," she grumbled, turning over slowly to grimace at Weiss with a face half-caked in mud. She had grass sticking out of her hair. She smiled weakly, and Weiss nearly passed out with relief.

"Hey Weiss… love you… what's up?" Ruby blinked. "Oh, wait, crap!" She sat up, brushed most of the dirt off her face, and then froze as she looked out at the battlefield. "Whaaat…"

Weiss looked too.

The field was still, the other students staring in confusion and shock at a huge, stone statue of the Atkorock. As Weiss watched, one of the tentacles cracked under its own weight and crumbled to the ground, slowly beginning to disintegrate like any other Grimm would.

"Woah," Ruby mumbled. "What… did  _ that?" _

"You, I think," Weiss replied numbly.

"Oh." Ruby took a moment to contemplate this. "Wait, WHAT!?"

"WEISS! RUBY!" The two of them look up to find Yang and Blake running towards them.

"Guys!" Ruby yelled, popping to her feet. She swayed, and Weiss quickly caught her before she could fall. Yang and Blake collided with them, pulling both of them into a crushing hug.

"You  _ moron," _ Yang mumbled at Ruby, shaking tears out of her eyes. "What were you thinking!?"

Ruby's face twisted, and without a scrap of hesitation she reared back and headbutted Yang right in the face.

"OW!"

"You know _exactly_ what I was thinking!" Ruby shouted (even as she massaged her sore head), "and you'd have done it too!"

Yang pulled back, rubbing her nose and blinking rapidly. She looked at Weiss, then Ruby, and then took a deep breath. "You're okay," she said, almost like she couldn't believe it. "You're both okay. Oh thank  _ god _ , you're both okay."

Blake just buried her head in the crook of Weiss's neck, her face wet with wordless tears.

Weiss hugged them all to her, still too shocked to really process how close she'd just come to the next life. And that  _ light… _

It was Blake who recovered first sniffing sharply and pulling herself upright. "Ruby… what  _ was  _ that?"

Ruby opened her mouth to respond, but a loud  _ cracking  _ noise cut her off.

The four of them turned and watched as part of one of the stone tentacles crumbled away, revealing a red, glowing, and most troublingly  _ moving  _ eye.

"Oh  _ come on! _ " Ruby groaned.

Galvanized by the resurgence of danger, Yang broke away from them to run towards the forest that hid the Atkorock's core. "We can kill it while it's stunned!" she shouted back.

The rest of team RWBY didn't waste another second following her. They rushed into the woods, following the tentacles even as they started to creak and move again.

One broke free and lashed out at them, but Hikari ran in alongside them and severed it. "We'll cover you! GO!" she shouted. The other students fell in around their flanks, forming a spear with Team RWBY at the tip.

And then, they reached it.

It'd coiled up in the ruins of an ancient building, which it'd leveled as it thrashed about to free itself. It was lumpy and gnarled, perhaps hundreds of years old, but the body itself was only a little taller than Yang. Cracks in the stone encasing it revealed more eyes, and a maw that screamed caustic spittle at them as the monster continued to writhe with hatred and malice.

Ruby took one glance at the rest of her team, and smirked. "Coldsnap!"

Weiss fell into the practiced motions. Raising her hand, she raised two pillars of ice and used the last of her gravity dust to form a long sequence of Glyphs aimed at the Grimm's forehead. Blake looped her ribbon around the pillars to form a makeshift slingshot, and Yang quickly climbed into it.

The Atkorock seemed to realize what was happening, and its struggles grew more and more frantic. another one of the tentacles broke free, but Ruby and Belka cut it down before it could get close.

"Ready!" Blake shouted.

"Ready!" Weiss answered.

Yang grinned, her hair catching aflame and her eyes blazing red as Ruby's cape. "FIRE!"

Blake launched her into Weiss's glyphs, and Yang accelerated until she was nothing but a streak of fire as her semblance directed every last shred of stored-up energy into a single strike.

The impact shook the world, and when the dust finally settled, there was no Atkorock in the Emerald Forest anymore.

* * *

Lucia and Wister stood at the edge of the clearing, observing the stone coils strewn across the chaotic landscape of churned mud and shattered trees.

"Welp," Wister said. "I got fuckin' nothing. What in the name of every holy thing just happened, Luce?"

Lucia crouched down, picking up a fragment of the stone. It cracked and crumbled in her hand, before disintegrating into nothing.

"Qrow Branwen's niece, huh?" she mused, looking off past the field into the forest, where the sounds of cheers and celebration were beginning to rise.

Then, a movement in the trees above them caught Lucia's attention. She looked up, and grabbed Wister's shoulder.

"What're ye—" Wister followed her gaze. "Aw shite."

A black bird tilted its head, staring down at them with red, red eyes.

"You could have told us you had kids here, y'know," Lucia said.

The raven didn't respond, but it's eyes seemed to sharpen. It took off into the woods, and Lucia and Wister followed it until they were out of sight of the clearing.

The bird dropped to the ground, and when it landed it wasn't a bird anymore. "They aren't your concern," Raven said, staring off through the woods.

"Fine. Why're ye here then?" Wister asked, crossing their arms and leaning against a tree. They reached back and snapped off one of their quills, using it as a fidget while carefully avoiding Raven's eyes. "Ye said no contact 'til we graduate. Three years on and this's the second time ye've broken that rule."

Raven gave the students a calculating look. "I'm here because things have changed back in Mistral," she said. "I need your team to qualify for the Vytal Festival tournament after all."

"Ye cannae tell us more than that?"

"I'm already taking a risk meeting you this close to Beacon. Just know that I need you at Haven. I'll explain more once you arrive."

"Is that really why you're here, or was it to make sure  _ they  _ were safe?" Lucia asked, gesturing bluntly in the direction of the battlefield. Raven's eyes blazed at her, but the younger woman held her ground. "It so happens we were becoming friends with your daughters, before we figured out who they were. Florence even thinks we have a chance at recruiting them. Should we continue as we were, or back off?"

Raven's eyes narrowed. "Who you make friends with isn't my concern," she said, after a moment. "Just remember that your ultimate objective is still to graduate and return to the tribe  _ without  _ raising suspicion. Don't take on more than you can handle. And  _ don't  _ underestimate Ozpin,  _ or  _ your fellow students. Are we clear?"

Lucia and Wister looked to one another. ”As the sky above us, ma'am,“ Wister said.

"Good," Raven said. And then, in a flutter of wings, she was gone.

The two seniors stood there, watching her fly away for a long, long moment.

"Fuckin' bonkers, that is," Wister grumbled. "How in the absolute shining fuck does  _ she  _ have two daughters? And how'd  _ they  _ turn out to be nice decent people?"

"I honestly thought she had another sibling," Lucia mused dryly. "Guess they're really hers though. Huh."

Wister looked at her in surprise. Then they chuckled. "Ye smug bastard, ye're a better liar than I am."

Lucia smirked and rolled her eyes. "C'mon," she said, turning and heading back towards the others. "Let's make sure no minor Grimm are sneaking around. This is a big victory; we should make sure they can celebrate it."

Wister stabbed their quill into a tree and turned to follow with an easy smile. "As ye say, sweetheart."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOP WHOOP
> 
> This one was a complex bastard of a chapter. But, uh, yeah! A lot of things happened.
> 
> Thanks to FriendofYggdrasil, Sgt. Chrysalis, JuniorThib, and shockfactor for the beta! Special thanks to Friend (and Chrys) for helping me understand how treating a dismemberment works, and also for generally putting up with my gooberishness.
> 
> PS: I love Sufjan. I didn't think I'd love Sufjan, but I love him, and I hope you do too. Don't worry about him though, he'll be all right. ;D


	17. Questions Unanswered

The forest gate was choked with familiar faces when they returned. The counter-alarm had gone off as soon as Orlovski reported back to Beacon, but there were still many students with friends or teammates who had yet to report home.

Heather actually used her semblance to phase through the ancient wrought-iron and tackle the rest of her team in a flying hug, wailing apologies for not having joined them sooner. Sufjan's team hurriedly took up his stretcher and rushed him to medical, while the others met up with their various teammates and friends.

RWBY was the only full team who'd shown up to the fight, but they of course had Team JNPR to greet them.

"RWBYIES!" Nora cried as she rushed to pull them all into a crushing hug the second they were through the gate and back on school grounds. "Oh my crackers are you guys all okay!?"

"Yeah!" Ruby beamed, hugging her excitable friend back. "We're okay! Everybody's okay."

"Except Sufjan," Blake added. "But he's been making puns the whole time so… he'll probably be alright."

"That's incredible," Ren said, his lips twisting into a rare, wide smile. "To defeat a Settlement Killer with so few casualties is exceptionally rare."

Ruby traded hasty glances with her teammates. "And Yang was the one who killed it!" Ruby said, smiling extra wide as she grabbed her sister around the waist and pulled her into a side-hug. "She took it out in one big punch like WA-BAMMM!"

Nora let out a dramatic gasp, while Yang blushed sheepishly. "Aw, it wasn't that big a deal…"

Pyrrha clapped her firmly on the shoulder. "Yang. You do realize that an Atkorrock is the kind of Grimm that most licensed Hunters would  _ run away from? _ "

"She's right," Weiss agreed, looking up at Yang with infinite fondness. "You might just be the youngest person ever to bring one down."

"Guys, it's really not a big deal—Nora! Hey—NORA—!"

The protests fell on deaf ears as Nora lifted Yang high over her head. "HEY EVERYBODY THIS IS YANG XIAO LONG SHE'S MY FRIEND AND SHE JUST PUNCHED A GIANT SQUID IN THE FACE!"

A chorus of cheers exploded around the courtyard, growing into a whooping chorus of applause. Yang had the gumption to quit protesting to smile and wave, even if she was obviously embarrassed about it.

Ruby laughed, cheering and clapping along with the rest, until someone tapped her on the shoulder.

Anxiety spiked through her body. She looked back, and found Belka and Ruth standing together, looking at her with furtive concern.

"Hey," Ruth said in a low voice, pulling Ruby gently away from her team. "I dunno what you did back there, but it probably saved our lives."

Ruby swallowed. "W-well, I mean, uh—"

Belka held up a hand. "We been checkin' around, and we think it's just us who saw you blow up. Nobody else knows that weird light came from you." She smiled, winking slyly. "And we ain't gonna spread the rumor 'less you want us to."

Ruby felt a hesitant smile break out across her face. "Thank you," she said, sincere relief settling her muscles.

Ruth simply offered a thumbs-up. 

"No worries," Belka said, giving Ruby an easy smile. "But hey, lemme know if you do figure it out, 'kay? Cuz that was fuckin' badass."

Ruby nodded, waving shakily as the two went back to their teams, her smile quickly falling off. 

"Ruby?" Jaune's voice behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin. "You okay? What was that about?"

Ruby shook her head, closing her eyes and taking a steadying breath. "I'll… explain later," she promised.

_ If I can even figure it out myself. _

* * *

**4/9/825 at 11:22 A.M.**

**The Fiery FRNS Groupchat**

**SuperSufi: So hey guys they're about to put me under but i wanted to do one last thing** **  
** **SuperSufi: Y'know, in case this doesn't work and ol lefty's really gone for good** **  
** **SuperSufi: i just want to prepare everyone** **  
** **SuperSufi: Okay here goes** **  
** ***SuperSufi changed their username to StumpySufi*** **  
** **FortuneFavors: is2g sufi im gonna sit by your bed after they stitch you up** **  
** **FortuneFavors: im just gonna sit there and watch you** **  
** **FortuneFavors: and youll wake up and be like "oh my beautiful and brilliant leader fortuna…"** **  
** **FortuneFavors: and i will punch you in the dick** **  
** **Ramalamadingdong: Hey that's uncalled for I think it's all right.** **  
** **GunsOfNavarre: yeah Tuna you don't really have a leg to stand on here** **  
** **FortuneFavors: *amendment** **  
** **FortuneFavors: im gonna punch each of you in the dick individually** **  
** **FortuneFavors: no dick will go unpunched in this house tonight** **  
** **StumpySufi: Aw i love y'all too.** **  
** **StumpySufi: Okay they got the needle in see ya.** **  
** **GunsOfNavarre: sweet dreams Sufi** **  
** **Ramalamadingdong: Goodnight sweet prince. <3** **  
** **FortuneFavors: dont die u beautiful idiot**

* * *

**4/9/825 at 11:25 P.M.**

**GunscytheGirl: PENNY OMG** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Friend Ruby! Are you alright!? I saw that there was an S-Class alert and that you were among the students who participated in the engagement and I know that the alert was called off but they haven't input any after-action reports yet and I saw from the gate cameras that one young man was badly injured but everything was moving so fast I couldn't see you clearly!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: im ok im ok!!!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: penny it was amazing we fought an atkorock and WE WON AND NOBODY DIED!!!** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Oh thank goodness! :D** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: yeah i saw the flare go up and i was on the edge of the woods so me n a couple seniors ran in and we KILLED IT** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: yang punched a huge hole in it it was AWESOME** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: SENSATIONAL!!!!! That is extremely impressive, friend! Congratulations!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: ^///W///^** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: thanks penny! ** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: i mean idk i only showed up at the end though** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and there were like 20 ppl there by then** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and a couple people did actually get hurt p bad but they should be okay** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: i gotta go take care of stuff b/c things are super hectic rn but ill text you again later ok?** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: That is acceptable! Take care of yourself Ruby!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: thanks penny you too!!!** **  
** ****

* * *

**4/9/825 at 4:10 P.M.**

**CameraShy: Hi!!! Taffeta, right? Weiss told me a little about what's going on!** **  
** **CameraShy: I'm Velvet from team CFVY and I've been dating my entire team for two years.** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Hi Velvet!!!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Thank you so so so much!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Um!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: So things happened!!!!! Idk if Weiss mentioned names but Hikari asked me out after all the stuff today!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: And, Ruth didn't say yes but didn't say no just that she needed to think about it!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: And we're gonna tell Heather when she gets out of the shower and I think I'm gonna ask her out too!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Which is a little scary but also really great they're so great!!!** **  
** **CameraShy: OMG!!!!!!!** **  
** **CameraShy: CONGRATS OMG!!!!!!!** **  
** **CameraShy: This is the best week ever!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: I KNOW!!!** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Anyway thank you for reaching out do you want to get lunch sometime sorry idk what protocol is like for poly mentoring or w/e???** **  
** **CameraShy: Lunch sounds great! I'll check my schedule and get back to you okay?** **  
** **LaffyTaffy: Ok Heather's back I gotta go but thank you thank you thank you!!!!** **  
** **CameraShy: Of course! And congratulations again!!!**

* * *

**4/9/825 at 9:34 P.M.**

**GunscytheGirl: okay im back sorry about how long that took** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Not to worry, Ruby! It seemed as if you were very busy!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: yeah turns out settlement killers require a lot of paperwork but also we each got a 1 million lien bounty for it which is COOL I GUESS!?!?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: i guess i kinda didn't realize how big a deal this all was until ozpin just handed me this card like "oh and here's enough money for a year's supply of hot dogs"** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and they don't even tax it bc it's technically not a job!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: but um anyway** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: okay serious mode, can i tell you something that im freaking out about that you can't tell anyone else?** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: ^===^** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: That is meant to be a zipper, indicating that my "lips are sealed," so to speak!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: lol thank you penny you're the best <3** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Of course! You keep many secrets for me, so it is only fair.** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Also you are my most trusted and valued friend and I am delighted and honored to be held in your confidence!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: ahhhhh that's so sweet penny!!!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA <33333** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: :D** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: okay okay okay so uh** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: have you ever heard of anything that can turn grimm to stone???** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: ?** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Not trapped, as with Earth Dust, but entirely petrified?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: that's what it looked like yeah** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: I have not heard of such a phenomenon.** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: You witnessed this occur with the Atkorock?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: ……..kinda?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: but weiss thinks *i* caused it** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: O_O** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Oh.** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Oh my.** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Can you recall the event or describe it in further detail?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: so i got in and weiss was about to get hit** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: like… probably bad enough to be really messed up ;_;** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Oh no! D:** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: yeah** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and so i kinda** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: jumped in front of her to protect her, and then suddenly i was waking up on the ground with a headache and the grimm was turned to stone** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: everybody says there was this really bright light** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: blake and yang and a couple of our classmates said it looked like it came from me and weiss said it felt really weird** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: she said it was like it the light touched her aura directly and interacted with it somehow** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: it was cold and she heard singing, but she can't remember what song.** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Oh my. That's very strange.** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: I KNOW** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: what else…** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: oh! the stone was like, flaky and thin** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and it crumbled and disintegrated like grimm normally do just more slowly** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and the grimm woke up again after a minute or so** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: like some parts of it were still alive under the stone I guess** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: it was super stunned though so we had a chance to get in close and then we used coldsnap which was super cool and killed it in one big shot like BAM!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: anyway uh** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: i'm trying to play it off rn but my team and i have no idea what i did and its FREAKING ME OUT** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: 🤔** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: I do not believe I have knowledge of any such phenomenon. However, I will use my resources to see if I can uncover anything of relevance. In the meantime, if you can ask Weiss more about her experience, or try and recall any other details yourself, please share your findings!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: will do!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: thank you so so so much penny!!!** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Any time, Ruby!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: oh! and uh** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: would you like to get together again at some point next week?** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: we haven't done that since last semester and there's a lot of stuff i wanna talk to you about!!!** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: That sounds lovely, Ruby! Feel free to name any time and place!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: aaaaa will do!!!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: i gotta go bc weiss is being a sweetie and making spaghetti and im really hungry (which is maybe bc of the big flash of light thing idk????)** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: but anyway thank you so much!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and see you soon!!!** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: and ** **  
** **GunscytheGirl: love you penny!** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: I love you too, Ruby! Enjoy your spaghetti!** **  
** **MotherOfInvention: Goodnight!**

* * *

**4/10/825 at 2:12 AM**

**RedRosie: hey louis? u up?** **  
** **SunKingLouis: I am studying in the library. What is it?** **  
** **RedRosie: can i join u?** **  
** **RedRosie: i got something i need to talk about**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Sgt. Chrysalis, FriendofYggdrasil, and JuniorThib for looking this over! I'm pretty sure that's everybody, but lemme know if you looked it over and I forgot ;w;
> 
> And thank you all for reading!


	18. Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MAJOR EDIT: Upon popular request, tweaked the ending of this chapter to clarify the meaning of a bunch of stuff. A little more explanation to come in the endnote.

Sleep didn't come easily to them that night. Ruby was the exception, falling into the mattress and immediately giving up all pretenses of consciousness. Yang was the next, curling protectively around her sister and Weiss and mumbling fitful nonsense into their hair. She still struggled to actually sleep, nervous and alert well past midnight, but eventually the void claimed her as well. Blake wrapped herself around Yang's back, and by the eventual slowing of her breathing Weiss had to assume that she'd fallen asleep as well.

It was comforting to have her girlfriends all cuddled up together, but in the dark, with the celebrations over and the whole world gone silent, there was nothing left to distract her. The memories began running laps through her head, over and over and over, each repetition bringing with it a terrible numb certainty:

She should be dead. 

Moreover, _ Ruby _should be dead. Weiss could think of six different ways she could have saved her own life, if she'd had about a half-second more to think, but there was nothing she could have done to protect Ruby from her own self-sacrifice.

And yet there lay the greatest confusion at all; it _ hadn't _been self-sacrifice. Ruby had saved her life, and she'd done it in a way that was so utterly surreal and inexplicable that it had Weiss wondering if she was actually comatose in the Beacon infirmary after all.

Her solace was that she remembered the event with second-by-second clarity. From the moment she saw the threat, to the moment that she found Ruby lying in the mud. But even then that didn't help, because there was a slice of time which just didn't make any sense, no matter how clearly she recalled it.

The light, swirling cold all around her, and the sound of _ singing… _

…A song. A terribly beautiful, terribly powerful, terribly _ familiar _ song.

She fidgeted, and realized with a sigh that she wasn't going to be able to get to sleep just yet, no matter how comfortable she was. There was just too much to think about, too much uncertainty. She needed to do something to ground herself.

Her eyes drifted over to the bookshelves, and lit with sudden inspiration.

It was a silly thought, but she'd had a silly week. It was something she hadn't done in a long time, something that would almost certainly end up being pointless in the end, but it might be comforting too. An old forgotten part of her routine.

Quietly as she could to avoid disturbing her sleeping loves, Weiss slipped out of bed and padded across the floor to the bookshelf. There was a box, tucked away on the second-highest shelf, just barely low enough that Weiss could reach it on her tiptoes. She tugged it down, brushing the faint layer of dust off the top, fingers tracing the familiar snowflake insignia engraved in the dark wood.

A voice in her head chided that this was nothing but an irrational, outmoded superstition. But that voice sounded a lot like Jacques, and Weiss had gotten pretty good at ignoring her dear old dad over the last few years.

Resolved, she slipped out of the room without even bothering to put on shoes, and failed to notice two black ears twitch as she eased the door shut.

* * *

The school turned most of its lights out shortly after midnight, but Weiss walked confidently down the shadowed halls, purposeful and unhurried. The moonlight was cast in through the windows. All was silent, and long shadows lay across the floor.

All were still, save for Weiss's, and the shadow that behind followed her.

Soon Weiss left the dorms entirely, padding barefoot down the white brick path to one of the school's gardens. She eased the old wrought-iron gate open and walked between the hedges and flower plots. The night turned it all peculiar, the faintest hint of wind rustling through the leaves of thin, decorative trees.

Weiss stopped, turning her head to look up at the sky.

Beacon's light pollution was hardly anything, compared to the faint glow above Vale, off over the bay. But beyond that distant refractive haze, the stars were out in their full panoply. Low in the sky, the moon made shadows of the buildings.

And in their light, Weiss seemed to shine. Her nightgown flowed around her, the silhouette of her body thin beneath it. The stars danced in her eyes.

She was magnificent, so much that Blake finally broke her silence. "Hey."

"Who—!?" Weiss whirled around, nearly dropping her strange wooden box. She squinted into the darkness, then relaxed with a grumpy sigh. "Blake! You scared me!"

"Sorry, sorry," Blake said. She walked over and wrapped Weiss in a loose hug. "I didn't mean to startle you, I just got worried when you slipped out of bed. You doing okay?"

"Yes, I'm alright. I just couldn't sleep yet." Weiss tilted her head to kiss Blake's knuckles. "I… have something I want to do."

"Something involving that box?"

Weiss nodded. She gestured for Blake to sit with her at one of the stone tables scattered around the garden, and they did so, sliding in close together. "It's… an heirloom," Weiss explained, setting the box on the dry stone. "Winter gave it to me, when she left home. It's one of the last pieces of the Schnee inheritance that holds any weight for me, my semblance excepted."

Blake's eyes widened, as Weiss undid the latch and withdrew a cloth-wrapped rectangle. "Those are…"

"Tarot cards, yes." Weiss slowly unwrapped the deck, laying the cloth out across the table. The fabric was beautifully embroidered, with shimmering silver thread forming the familiar Schnee snowflake. The cards were backed with the same sigil, embossed in silver foil. 

Awe filled Blake's chest—just looking at the deck, she could _ feel _its age. "You said your sister was interested in the practice. You never said that it ran in the family."

"The way Winter tells it," Weiss explained, "we Schnees were fortune tellers long before my grandfather made us known as industrialists. He himself used this deck to plan his prospecting expeditions, and he ensured that it was passed down to my mother." She sighed heavily. "But mother never really cared much about the family name, only the privileges that came with it. Winter was the one who found them and taught me their basic use, but I think _ she _really only cared about the practice as a form of rebellion against our parents. She gave me all her materials not long before she left to join the military."

"And you?" Blake asked.

Weiss paused, her face pinching as she struggled with some particularly elusive thought, and for what seemed like the thousandth time—and yet the first—Blake realized just how fucking _ beautiful _Weiss was, shimmering under starlight. Blake had started falling for Weiss a long time ago, but in that moment she realized she might just keep on falling forever.

"I'm not all that certain," Weiss said, drawing Blake back to the present moment. "I've always thought of fortune telling as an amusing diversion and nothing more, but… you actually inspired me to reconsider. Our visit to the temple got me thinking about my own spirituality in a way I haven't in… stars know how long." She chuckled, then. "And the stars _ would _know, I suppose."

Something tickled the back of Blake's memory. "Atlesian faith is predominantly sidereal, right? Star worship?"

Weiss nodded. "It's a bit more complicated than that, but you can think of it loosely in those terms." She carefully took the cards in her hands and began shuffling them with quick, dextrous motions. "The sun, moon, and planets are all considered divine objects as well. Each star, and on a different level each _ atom, _ is a note in a single cosmic song. This song—the Cantríon—unites everything. We each play a part in it, creating harmony and dissonance with the rest of the world around us."

Blake's ears perked. "That's actually not too far off from the Kanzakh, even if the metaphors are a little different."

"I noticed the similarities as well," Weiss said. "I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the distant past they split from the same root faith. Regardless… that's part of why I came all the way out here. Atlesian tarot readings are traditionally done at night, and those held under open starlight are considered particularly auspicious."

"That's… fascinating," Blake admitted with full honesty. It wasn't a practice Blake had ever heard of before, but Atlas and Mistral were very different places. Still, it raised a question. "Won't you need a light?" Blake asked. Weiss, as far as she knew, didn't have night vision.

"Not quite," Weiss answered, her lips turning up. "Just watch." She held the deck in front of her and channeled a little of her aura into her hands. As Blake watched in growing astonishment, the sigil on the top card began to glow.

"Dust," Weiss explained as the light cast shadows over her eyes. "The exact mixture is an old Schnee family secret, developed long before even my grandfather's time. It produces a unique spectrum of light which is traditionally said to have esoteric properties."

Blake shivered. She tried to figure out what to call the color, and realized she didn't have a word for it. It was almost blue, and it was almost yellow, but it certainly _ wasn't _ any kind of green. Her skin tingled where the light touched. "I'm inclined to believe them," she said. "What… _ is _that?"

Weiss chuckled. "It's a clever trick, actually; the way the crystals are arranged creates an optical illusion that tricks your retinas into sending contradictory signals." Her smile grew, with the eerie snowflakes reflected in her eyes. Like this, she looked… _ ghostly. _ Like a phantom out of some faerie tale. It was a side of Weiss Blake had never seen before, one that was as alluring as it was surprising. "I've always thought it was quite beautiful."

"It is. And so are you." Blake's mind caught up with her mouth, and she laughed at her own cheesy line. "Gods, I sound like Yang."

Weiss's expression turned to an affectionate smirk. "That's hardly the worst thing in the world," she said, sliding close and planting a little kiss on Blake's cheek. "Would you cut the cards for me?"

Blake's ears stood up straight as a tremor shot through her. "What!? A-are you sure?"

"Yes?" Weiss gave her a puzzled look.

"It's just," Blake hastened to explain. "The way my mom taught me, only the fortune teller is supposed to touch her cards. It's the same as how some Hunters won't let anyone else touch their weapons—the deck is an extension of yourself, so handling it is… intimate."

"Well _ Atlesians _ believe that it's good luck to have a loved one cut your cards before a reading. Winter and I always cut one another's cards when we practiced." Weiss's eyebrow rose, and she gave Blake a sly smile. "Besides; you should know that you're welcome to handle _ any _ part of me as _ intimately _as you like."

Blake's heart sprinted in her chest. "I guess Yang's rubbing off on both of us," she teased, glad for the darkness hiding her blush. "In that case…"

She gingerly reached out and took the top third off the deck. The cards felt heavy in her hands, and all levity left her as she put the deck back together with the same care she'd use to handle Weiss's very soul. _ In a way, that's exactly what you're doing, _said a voice in her head which sounded conspicuously like Kali Belladonna.

A smile edged across Blake's face. _ Then I'll be just that careful, _she promised that part of herself.

Weiss took the cards again, but instead of beginning the reading she set them down on the cloth and wrapped her newly-freed hands around her girlfriend's back. Blake's body warmed under the touch, and soon she was pulling Weiss into her lap. They kissed, barest contact quickly rising into passion, and Blake nearly forgot where they were and why.

She caught herself, right before her lips landed on Weiss's neck. "We shouldn't stay out here too long," she said, ignoring the childish little pang in her chest that wished they could continue.

"You're right, unfortunately," Weiss sighed. She sifted off Blake's lap, and Blake leaned on her shoulder as she began to lay out the spread.

First, she set four cards out in a wide diamond, then placed another four cards inward to form a four-spoked cross. She nodded, and took one last card from the middle of the deck and placed it in the empty center spot. "I think that'll do."

Blake peered curiously at the arrangement of glowing snowflakes. "I've never seen a spread like that before."

Weiss gave her a sheepish smile. "Well… so much has been going on lately, it was hard to decide what sort of guidance to seek, so I fell back on the basics. This is an expanded version of the past/present/future spread… focused on myself and on the three people who are most important to me."

Blake felt a warmth spreading through her chest. "So the four spokes…"

"Ruby," Weiss pointed to the top card, then moved her finger clockwise around the outside of the spread. "Myself, you, and Yang. The outer cards represent our current selves, and the inner ring represents our more distant futures. I would have included a layer for the past… but that would make thirteen."

Blake nodded slowly. Arranging an unlucky number of cards for a fortune telling was probably a bad way to go. "And the card in the center?"

"All of us, together."

Blake's smile grew, and she hugged Weiss tighter. "I like it."

"Thank you," Weiss said. "Now… one last thing before we begin."

She took a breath and closed her eyes. _ "Cantríon," _ she whispered, as she raised one palm to the sky, stretching her arm as far as she could and splaying her fingers wide. _ "Ban'taaluch laii da'paal." _

Blake shivered, though she wasn't quite sure why. For a moment she thought she saw the cards flash brighter, but when she blinked they were just as they'd been, that same nameless color.

"Now," Weiss said, lowering her hand, "First, our foundations."

One by one, she turned over the outer ring of cards.

For Ruby, the Eight of Swords. For Weiss, the Ace of Wands. For Blake, the Four of Swords. And for Yang, Strength.

The two of them paused for a moment, lost in thought.

"Strength, I get," Blake said. "Kindness, compassion, resilience, and trust. I don't think I could describe Yang better."

"Agreed." Weiss picked up the Strength card, holding it up to inspect the image; the lady and the lion in restful harmony. She set it down in its place. "The rest are… interesting though. I certainly wouldn't have thought to apply the Four of Swords to you."

Blake examined the card. It was a little different from the design she was familiar with, a pair of women sitting and conversing, with four swords idly standing in the earth around them. "I think I get it," Blake said. "I've had a rough life, but the past few years… I've felt safe. Beacon's become my home, and you've become my family." Her eyes settled on another detail, a heavy cloud hanging in the sky above the women. "But the Four of Swords can also mean the calm before a storm." She thought back to earlier, to all the revelations and changes that this year had started off with. "Maybe it's saying to enjoy this peace while we can."

Weiss gave her a skeptical eyebrow. "_ Peace _isn't how I'd describe the last few days," she said.

Blake smiled sheepishly. "True. Very true."

Weiss leaned into Blake, taking a deep breath as she switched her focus. "And then we have _ Ruby's _card."

The Eight of Swords, bearing the image of a woman blindfolded and bound against a fence of blades, barefoot and ragged. Self-doubt. Isolation. Imprisonment.

"It _ is _pretty ominous," Blake admitted. "And confusing."

"I agree. Ruby certainly doesn't _ seem _like she feels trapped." Weiss reached out and picked up the card, holding it up to inspect it. "If anything, she seems happier and more open than ever."

Blake's heart warmed at the thought, but then a troubling thought slipped into her mind. "Actually… I can think of one way it might fit."

"Oh?"

Blake took a breath, condensing thoughts that'd been percolating in the back of her mind for the past few days into a coherent statement. "Well, bluntly? I don't think she's ready for a sexual relationship."

Weiss stiffened. "Ah. About earlier, with Yang, in the shower, I—"

Blake squeezed her shoulder before she could work herself up. "It's okay," she said. "Yang and I talked about it already. We should all come back to that another time, but I'm not mad at you, or at her. And I don't think Ruby is either. If anything… I think we just need to take things a little more slowly."

Weiss nodded, slowly relaxing again. "Thank you," she said, turning her attention back to Ruby's card. "That makes sense." She ran a hand nervously through her hair. "I… I don't know. I feel guilty sometimes. Being older, more certain about what I want… I don't want to hurt her by asking too much too fast."

"I know what you mean," Blake sighed as a familiar braid of anxiety and guilt wrapped around her chest. There was a part of her that remembered the last relationship she'd been a part of. A part which had recognized, even back when she was a lovestruck fourteen-year old, that there was something uncomfortable in being kissed by a boy four years older than her.

Still, it was different. The age gap was smaller, and more importantly Ruby wasn't nearly as young as Blake had been. Blake smiled, her heart full of the brave girl she loved, and she the guilt ebbed away. "I think we can trust her to come to us when she's ready," she said, planting a soft kiss on Weiss's cheek. "

"You're right, of course," Weiss said, a warm smile slipping across her face. She picked up the last revealed card: the Ace of Wands, an image of a spectral hand holding a living wooden staff. "So what does _ this _mean?"

Blake scratched her chin thoughtfully. "Well… aces are associated with beginnings and potential. Wands are associated with fire, willpower, aura… you've still got parts of your semblance you haven't mastered, and you're also beginning to explore your spirituality. Like all of us, you're still learning and growing as a person. I think it makes sense."

Weiss shook her head slowly. "I'm not so sure… I don't know why, but I have the funniest feeling about it. Like it means something more."

"Like what?"

Weiss didn't speak for a moment, turning the card back and forth to examine the lines. Her eyes shimmered eerily in their light. "I don't know," she said, setting it back down. "But… let's not stay out here all night."

She proceeded to flip the next ring of cards; their futures. The Page of Cups for Ruby, the Magician for Weiss, and the Queen of Swords for Yang, inverted so that it was upside-down.

But their eyes were stuck on the last card, the one in Blake's spoke.

Number thirteen of the Major Arcana. Death.

Blake laughed nervously, a pit forming in her stomach as she eyed the skeletal knight. "Well, at least it's not the Tower?"

Weiss suppressed a chuckle. "It just means an ending," she reassured gently. "Or a transformation. We've all been through plenty of both."

"I know," Blake sighed. "Change always comes." She eyed the Four of Swords warily. "So I guess I _ am _in the calm before the storm."

"A reasonable interpretation," Weiss agreed. "What about the others?"

"I'm not sure." Blake's eyes swept the goblet-bearing Page and the Queen on her throne. "How do you tend to read court cards?"

"I've usually interpreted them as people," Weiss said. "It's odd though. The Page of Cups fits Ruby in a lot of ways—she's young, curious, intuitive, clever… but it's strange to interpret a Page as someone's _ future." _

A strange little memory popped into Blake's head, from the night after their visit to the museum. Ruby never did get around to explaining who she'd been texting, or why their conversation seemed to have such a huge impact on her. "Each of these arms already represents a person. Maybe the Page is someone else entirely?"

Weiss hummed thoughtfully. "Like who?"

"I'm not sure." Blake pondered for a moment. "We're about to meet a bunch of new freshmen on Monday, or it could be a person we already know. Either way it's probably someone more connected to Ruby than to us."

"Probably so. And then the inverted Queen of Swords. The only inversion in the whole spread so far. Intelligence, independence, directness _ are _all traits I'd assign to Yang…"

"…But the inversion clouds the meaning," Blake finished. Her eyes narrowed as she recalled another memory—that strange bird from the forest. "Again, what if the Queen isn't Yang at all?"

"You seem a bit more certain this time. Do you have a guess?"

"Raven."

"…Oh _ stars." _

Blake nodded, her mouth going dry at the implication. She didn't know much about the woman—not that Yang knew much herself—but what she _ did _know was easily stretched to fit. "Yang's been trying to contact her for years, but she's never had the chance to search Mistral."

"I see." Weiss's left hand tightened into a fist, and Blake lay hers gently atop it. Their eyes met, and exchanged matching feelings.

They'd never exactly talked about it, but… Blake had a few things she'd like to _ say _to Raven Branwen about family, given the chance. It seemed Weiss felt similarly.

In the end, it was only a possibility, but it felt a little too right for Blake to dismiss it.

"Lastly…" Weiss hummed, squeezing Blake's hand and finally tearing her eyes away from the Queen. "The Magician."

Potential, agency, and creativity. A man with one hand pointed towards the earth, and the other held a scepter towards the sky—which in this depiction was speckled with eerily glowing stars. Before him all four minor arcana were laid out. A cup, a sword, a pentacle, and a wand. Water, air, earth, and fire.

The symbolism seemed almost obvious, especially in connection with the Ace of Wands. "So you're going to become powerful," Blake said, frowning. "That's… it?"

"I suppose?" Weiss sounded uncertain. "It's oddly straightforward, given the other cards in the spread. Not that I _ mind _becoming a stronger huntress, but that can't be my whole future, can it?"

"Maybe we could add a card, for clarification?" Blake suggested.

Weiss considered for a moment. "That's not typically something I'd do… but if you think it's alright I suppose we can give it a shot." She drew another card from the deck and lay it below the Magician, before turning it over.

It was another unfamiliar design, but Blake supposed that made sense. If the objects of the sky were sacred in Atlas, it only made sense that their cards would take a different form. Still, she recognized the image instantly.

The image was of a woman, kneeling on a beach under an open sky. Above her, lines of light cast down from the heavens; a meteor shower, falling brightly towards her bowed head. Below the image, a number stood out in eerie light: Twenty.

Judgement. Symbolizing metamorphosis, ascension, choice, and change, but not the gentle kind. It was the penultimate card of the Major Arcana, second only to The World, number twenty-one, in power.

Weiss blinked, turning slowly to look at Blake. "Well. That escalated quickly."

"Wait," Blake said, eyes widening as one last piece of the puzzle asserted itself. "That's—"

"That's the card you assigned me, back at the Museum," Weiss confirmed. She frowned, then reached out and pulled another card. She set it next to Yang's cards, and flipped it.

Another unfamiliar design, and another which Blake still recognized instantly. A circle of fire, surrounded by concentric broken rings. The outside of the frame was full of flowers, and suddenly the nameless color had a name; gold. Purest gold. It bore the number nineteen.

The Sun. Joy, warmth, vitality, good fortune, protection. A perfect card for Yang. So perfect, they'd already named it once before.

"No…" Weiss muttered. She grabbed the deck and shuffled it frantically, before pulling another card and setting it with Ruby's. "Please, please don't—"

Blake wasn't even surprised this time. The image on the card was of a cloaked figure standing on a cliff, leaning on their walking stick while looking out at a lush valley. Above the valley, a single point of blinding light burned in the sky, to guide the pilgrim to their destination. 

Seventeen.

The Star. Hope, renewal, faith, futurity, destiny.

Blake gripped Weiss's arm, her ears folding back. "Weiss? What's happening?""

Wordlessly, Weiss placed one last card by Blake's. She flipped it over.

This was the most different. The shattered hung low over a dark lake, its eerie purple light reflecting perfectly off the ripples in the water where a tiger swam purposefully along the surface, its eyes locked ahead to some hidden goal. Eighteen.

The Moon. Secrets, fear, illusion, but also hidden truths, purpose, and quiet passion. Blake felt a shiver run up her spine.

Four of the five celestial Arcana. The very same ones they'd assigned each other, a few days ago.

Weiss started shaking, her hands balled to fists, and Blake realized why.

In a Mistralian tarot reading, this would be incredibly significant. The Major Arcana, all of them from zero, The Fool, to The World at twenty-one, were powerful cards. And the celestial arcana stood at the top of that hierarchy, powerful symbols with far less ambiguity than the preceding cards.

But  _ Atlesian  _ spirituality was sidereal. These weren't just powerful images, they were  _ sacred  _ ones. This wasn't just an incredibly unlikely series of coincidences lining up; from an Atlesian perspective, this was as good as a divine message.

Weiss stood and slammed her hands on the table, bracketing the spread. "Why,  _ why  _ are you telling me this!" she demanded. "What do you  _ want?" _

She glared up at the sky, at stars which burned and spun in her eyes. "I almost died today!" she shouted "I almost watched a woman I love die today! I don't want power, I don't want  _ destiny,  _ I want a void-damned  _ break!" _

"Weiss!" Blake grabbed her arm.

She was cold. Ice cold. Colder than any human being should ever be, with frost spreading out across her skin.

But she was still Weiss, and Blake tugged her back down to the bench. "Hey, look at me."

Weiss did, her anger quickly giving way to what was really under it, and the eerie cold warmed away as soon as it'd come. The lights in her eyes gave way to tears and she clutched at Blake and cried.

Blake held her tight, and that seemed to help a little.

"Do… you want to talk about that?" Blake asked, once Weiss's sobs subsided.

Weiss shook her head roughly. "I'm just so tired," she deflected. Blake's mouth twitched into a frown, but she let it drop as Weiss reached for the last card, the one in the center that represented Team RWBY together. "Let's just get this done and go back to bed."

She picked up the card with shaking fingers, and turned it over.

A young woman in traveling clothes, laughing joyously as she danced along the edge of a cliff. A dog followed at her heels, barking merrily. Number zero.

The Fool. Youth, inexperience, infinite potential. The Major Arcana could be seen as a journey, a divine progression from birth to enlightenment. In that progression, the Fool was the beginning.

After a moment's pause, Weiss raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Is that so? You give me a bloody heart attack and this is all you have to follow it up with?"

Blake let an uncertain smile slip, now that the tension had broken. "I can't say I disagree with it though," she said. "We're all young, and we've all got a lot of learning and growing left to do." She ran her hand through Weiss's hair. "I think the cards are saying that we shouldn't worry. We might fall off some cliffs and make some silly mistakes. We might even hurt each other. But, we'll continue to change, and heal, and…" she paused long enough to realize how cheesy she was going to sound, and decided she didn't give a shit, "The Celestial arcana are a set. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Four in a row. Whatever happens, we're going to be together until the end."

Weiss nodded, sniffling into Blake's yukata. "Okay," she said. She pulled back, sitting on her own and staring at her knees. "Would you… gather the cards and put them away? I don't think I can do it."

"Of course," Blake said. 

She found herself gazing one last time over the spread, memorizing the layout, before gently picking up each card and shuffling them back into Weiss's deck. Once done, she took the cloth and carefully wrapped it around the cards, then set them in the box and closed it.

When she looked up, she found Weiss staring up at the sky again, lost in some unknowable contemplation as the stars gazed down like a billion silver eyes.

"I'm scared, Blake," she said.

"Me too, Weiss. I love you."

"I love you too. Let's go back to our girlfriends?"

"Yeah."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHOOP
> 
> Sorry for the delay on this one, quarantine has been a surprisingly busy time and I've generally just kinda been thrown off my everything with how it's destroyed my schedule. But hey, at least we're here!
> 
> There've been a lot of good poly-fics coming out lately, and I'm deeply grateful to all the other writers doing the Good Work. Particular shoutout to ImperialAxis and Hester_Of_Ravenswood, who (I think) both started pollination fics since the quarantine. Keep it up friends!
> 
> Thanks to Sgt. Chrysalis, SeventeenFables, juniorthib, shockfactor for the look-over! I don't think FriendOfYggdrasil actually got to this one, but thanks to them too for being a generally radical person.
> 
> And thank you all for reading! Mask up and stay well, I'll see you again soon!
> 
> EDIT: So I said this in the comments, but I learned tarot reading from my mother. Shortly after posting this, I hit upon the realization that not only do most of my readers not have that background, but that some of the specific tarot symbolism used here is _unique to my family's style._ So I went in and did my best to clarify everything because good GOD, you literally would have had to read my mind to get some of this meaning. Big oops on my part, and I apologize for the ensuing confusion.


	19. Sisters

_ Upon the ashen field, the flowers began to sing… _

* * *

Ruby woke with a start, the strange old melody ringing in her ears. It took a moment to realize where she was, and to recognize the dream.

She'd had it since she was little. Once or twice a month, sometimes more in times of stress. It was short, and she could never recall the words to the song, but she remembered the flowers and the light. Only… it was familiar this time, in a way it had never been before.

She blinked herself awake, stretching the kinks out of her spine. She was in bed, and very warm, with strong arms wrapped tight around her waist.

But Weiss wasn't here. And, as she carefully turned her head, she realized that Blake wasn't here either. It was just her and Yang, who had her trapped in one of her big unbreakable hugs. Ruby tried to wriggle her way to freedom, but Yang just mumbled something in her sleep and squeezed tighter.

_ "Yang!"  _ Ruby whispered. Then, realizing that they were alone in the room and that the only person she was in danger of waking was the one she  _ wanted _ to wake, repeated herself at full volume. "Yang!"

Yang jerked. Her eyes flew open and then slammed shut again as she let out a groan.  _ "What? _ Oh my god Rubes, what time is it?"

"I dunno, but Weiss and Blake are gone!" Ruby tried to escape again, but Yang's hold was unbreakable as always.

"So? They're fine, Ruby. If they're both gone, then they're probably together." Yang sighed, squinting at Ruby through the dark. "It's okay, sis. They're safe."

"Y-you don't know that!" Ruby whimpered, her eyes suddenly burning. "They could be, I dunno, someone could have snuck in here and grabbed them while we were—"

"Nobody can sneak up on Blake, and she'd have woken us up instantly if there was anything dangerous going on." Yang tucked Ruby's head under her chin. "We can text them if you want, but first you gotta breathe, okay? You're hyperventilating. C'mon, breathe in…"

Ruby swallowed, and carefully breathed in.

"…Out…"

The air fled her lungs, and the tension went with it. Yang repeated the exercise a few more times, hugging her tighter until the heat and pressure drove the rest of the panic away. "You're safe. Everything is fine," Yang promised. "Did you have a nightmare?"

Ruby shook her head. "Just the flowers and singing dream again. But, it was louder this time."

Yang stared at her seriously, even while fighting to keep her eyelids from drooping. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Hi, sorry I woke you up. I'm Yang."

A little giggle, and Ruby snuggled closer to her sister. "You suck."

Yang gently kissed Ruby's forehead. "Shh, I rule."

"…Thank you."

"Anytime."

Ruby felt herself drifting off, but she caught herself at the last moment, looking up at Yang's goofy nose. "Hey, sis?"

"Mm?"

"I'm sorry I scared you. Before."

Yang took a deep breath, and forced her eyes open again.

Ruby struggled with the words as she continued. "I saw that Weiss was in danger, and I just  _ knew  _ what to do. And I really think I saved her life, but I… I don't know what I did, or how." She shuddered. "I'm  _ glad  _ I did it. I'm  _ so  _ happy Weiss is okay, but… I'm also  _ really _ scared."

"I know, Rubes. It's okay to be scared. I'm scared too." Yang's arms tightened around Ruby's body, strong and warm and unyielding. "When you jumped in front of Weiss, I thought I was gonna lose my girlfriend  _ and  _ my baby sister, but I didn't. Whatever's going on with you, it's protecting you. And it's protecting the people you love." She chuckled. "And given that you can't stop plunging into danger for five friggin' seconds, that's honestly a bit of a relief."

"Hey! I'm not that bad," Ruby mumbled, knowing she was  _ entirely  _ that bad. She looked out the window at the stars, and felt a chill she couldn't explain. She huddled closer to her sister, tucking herself into Yang's arms.

"Um… Yang?"

"Yeah, Rubes?"

"I love you."

"Love you too, sis."

They drifted off after that, only woken briefly by their girlfriends' return. The sisters didn't ask Weiss and Blake where they'd been, merely accepting them back into bed with open arms. Soon Ruby was drifting back to sleep.

And as her eyes closed, if anyone saw a flicker of light beneath the lids they surely assumed it was a trick of the moonlight.

* * *

_ Though neither of them would remember it in the morning, Ruby and Yang shared the same dream that night. _

_ They were children again, playing wildly under a silver sky. They rolled and laughed and wrestled, tumbling through the ashen flowers. And as they did, those flowers began to sing… _

_ "My sweetest children, shining bright _ _   
_ _ Put far away your fears tonight _ _   
_ _ For you're the keepers of the light _ _   
_ _ Which cleanses ev'ry curse and blight _

_ "Do not this shadowed world despise _ _   
_ _ Within your hearts our hope yet flies _ _   
_ _ Falsehood will fall and truth arise _ _   
_ _ Revealed by burning, mirrored eyes _

_ "So have no fear, o' daughters mine _ _   
_ _ For you the heavens shall align _ __   
_ Let all your courage freely shine _ _   
_ __ What lived in me is also thine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a mini-update! This was originally gonna be part of the last chapter but I ended up cutting it to get that one out a little earlier. And then I fell behind on _next_ chapter, so I figured I might as well bring this back to fill in the gap. I don't want to overload yinz with spooky stuff for the sake of spooky stuff though, and I promise we'll be getting a bit more lighthearted fluff in the next couple chapters.
> 
> Credit to Sgt. Chrysalis for coming up with part of the poem at the end! Didn't have anyone read through this though b/c it was short and I wanted to make sure to get it out sooner than later. ;w;
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading!
> 
> EDIT: After much consideration, I've decided to cut chapters 20 and 21 for now. I liked a lot of the ideas there, but the delivery had some big problems and the pacing was especially bad. My pacing is _always_ one of my weakest elements, but with the next couple chapters I want to try and refine it a little.
> 
> Practically, this mostly just means some of those scenes will happen again sometime in the future. The Vestige lore, the Nuts and Dolts subplot, and Yang and Amber growing closer are all things that are still "canon" as far as I'm concerned, I just want to try and pace this all better. Panoply is kind of a huge story, and very difficult to structure in a way I'm satisfied with. ;-;
> 
> Anyway, sorry for any confusion, and I really appreciate your patience through all of this. 💚


	20. Interlude: Moments

As dawn made itself welcome on Beacon's grounds, Heather Briar stared up at the familiar ceiling of her dorm. She slowly blinked herself to wakefulness, taking in the quite unfamiliar sensations of Taffeta clinging to her arm and Hikari snoring into her chest, and wondered how in the name of the Holy Sun she'd ended up here.

Not that she was complaining! Hikari's rough snoring, the way Taffeta's mass of black curls tickled her cheek, the smell of shampoo and unawoken morning breath, it was all _ lovely, _just… unexpected.

She glanced at the clock at her (their?) bedside. 6:30 A.M. Knowing Kari and Taffy, they wouldn't be up for another hour yet, though Heather always tried to get up early and go for a run.

There was a problem with carrying out this usual plan, however. Two problems, in fact. Lovely problems, cuddled up to her and making it very difficult to move. 

Heather resisted the ever-present urge to fidget. Neither of her new girlfriends(!?!?) were light sleepers, but climbing out of bed would surely rouse one of them, and disturbing those two beautiful souls right now seemed like it was probably some kind of offense against God.

_ "Psst. Hey, cottontail." _

Heather again resisted the urge to jump, even as she felt her tail twitch at the small of her back. Her eyes followed the sound, finding Ruth crouching by the bedside, her amber-orange eyes dark and laughing as she gave the three of them a once-over.

Ruth raised an eyebrow as if to say, _'So __how are you getting out of this one?' _

Heather rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at her best friend. _'C__hallenge accepted.' _

She admired the two girls cuddling her one last time, then carefully let her aura flow and flex to cover and suffuse her body. Once it was saturated, she carefully extended some of it down through the mattress, feeling out the spacing between the floor and the bedframe, just to be sure. It was narrow, but she'd done this more precisely in the field. Hopefully she wouldn't take any chunks out of the floorboards—Ruth would _ never _let her hear the end of it.

She took a deep breath, filling her lungs as wide as they'd go and, with a carefully-timed pulse of her semblance, fell through the mattress.

She snapped back into corporeality with a soft _ pop, _and quickly checked her surroundings. The bedframe was intact, but she could feel the faintest telltale tingle at the tip of her tail. She grimaced, twisting to glance down at the floor beneath her, then breathed a sigh of relief. There was a little scuff, where the soft fur had clipped into the wood, but it was almost invisible. _ Nailed it. More or less. _

She spent the next thirty seconds cautiously wriggling out from under the newly-conjoined beds. They'd tied them together last night with some of the spare sheets, and accidentally created a miniature obstacle course in the process. She managed it with some more careful applications of her semblance, finally rolling out with a huff of exertion.

Ruth looked down at her with a sardonic smile. It was a fun change of pace—usually, Heather was the one towering over her. _ "Good morning," _ Ruth whispered, reaching down to give Heather a hand.

The two of them froze as Hikari snorted and mumbled something in her sleep. She rolled into the warm spot Heather had left, tangling the blankets around herself more than they already were and bumping right up into Taffeta. Taffeta, in response, let out an _ adorable _little whine and latched onto Hikari with at least three arms before settling back into sleep. Hikari let out a happy little snuffle and buried her face in Taffeta's cleavage. And then immediately started to snore again.

Ruth's hand tightened in Heather's, and the two looked at each other with helpless smiles. Heather made a series of gestures as if to say _'I'__m going running, want to come with?' _

Ruth nodded, and the two of them slunk off to change without waking the others.

The halls were pretty quiet at this time of morning. The only other people up and about were Professors Port and Oobleck, having one of their customary quasi-friendly arguments about Valish politics as they passed the students in the hall. Heather's nose twitched at the collection of smells—the acidic aroma of Oobleck's coffee and the cloying sweetness of Port's mustache wax, mingled with cut grass and April flowers drifting through the open windows. All spiked with just the faintest trace of Ruth's deodorant.

Speaking of Ruth… her smile had gone cold as they left the room behind. She kept her hands buried in the pockets of her track pants, eyes forward, lip caught in her sharp teeth.

Heather didn't prod her. The whole team had a lot to think about, but Ruth probably had the most.

Once outside, they started off slow--a few stretches and a light jog down to the riverside. But before long they started going faster, following the river to the falls and then heading out along the cliffs. Soon the two of them were _running, _well past the sorts of speeds most humans could reach, forcing their auras into their legs and pushing their bodies to the limit.

They circled the campus four times before Ruth finally tapped out.

The two skidded to a stop, and she fell to her knees. "Fuck," she grunted.

Heather giggled, making a show of stretching her long legs. "The fox'll catch the rabbit someday, hun." She dropped into a crouch and patted Ruth gently on the head, wiggling her tail mischievously "But today? Ain't your day."

Ruth snarled at her, sharp teeth flashing in a grimace of a grin. She gave Heather a shove and pounced on her, toppling her over onto her back and straddling her on the grass. Heather laughed in delighted shock as Ruth leered down at her for a moment.

Then Ruth caught herself, and a faint grimace displaced the grin. She climbed off Heather and fell onto the grass beside her, shuffling a few extra inches away. "Shit," she muttered, running her hand through her short black hair.

Heather sighed, trying not to feel hurt by the sudden retreat. Touch was hard for Ruth—it'd taken a while for her to be comfortable even hugging Hikari casually, much less her other teammates—but she'd come a long way since they all met. "You alright, hun?"

Ruth groaned and shook her head. "It's not that. I feel fine, it's just… I don't want anymore misunderstandings."

_ Oh. _

Heather pursed her lips, quickly contemplating what she needed to say. "I'm not gonna misunderstand anything," she said, giving Ruth a firm eye. "And _you _don't gotta walk on eggshells your whole life. Taffeta's feelings are her own responsibility. You just answered her honestly."

"I know." Ruth sighed. She sat up, crossing her arm over her knees to make a rest for her head. "Still, you didn't miss that look on her face. I think I broke her heart."

"Sometimes that's just how it goes," Heather said in what she hoped was a gentle tone of voice. "Besides, you only had a third of it to break. She's got me now, and... well, we've all got Hikari. Which, honestly was mighty generous of you, considering."

Ruth paused, crinkles forming at the edge of her eyes as she smiled. "Kari's her own woman. You both make her happy. I like when she's happy. And I like when you and Taffy are happy, too. It just made sense." Her smile waned. "I just still feel like I'm letting everyone down."

"You _ ain't," _ Heather insisted, laying her hand on Ruth's shoulder. "Don't you dare start thinkin' like that. Jumping into a relationship you didn't want would have been the crueler thing."

Ruth blew a sigh out through her teeth. "You don't think I led Taffy on?"

"Nah, you're just too cool for your own damn good." Heather grinned. "And Taffy's got _great_ taste in women, 'case you didn't notice."

Ruth let off a snort, her lip turning up at the corner. "Hillbilly."

Heather stuck out her tongue. "City slicker."

Ruth laughed, low and short, and it made Heather smile in kind. For a minute they just watched the clouds go by.

A breeze ruffled their hair and set Heather's nose twitching. She could smell so much from out here. Ruth, the grass, the trees, the distant fumes of engine wash and the briny sting of the sea far below the Beacon cliffs. She could even smell Grimm, faint and far away. She'd never known an outside place where she couldn't.

Ruth could smell them too. It was one of the things that brought them together—the permanent reminder that death was always just out of sight, always hungry. It put a lot of things in perspective, and it'd helped them get through the roughest parts of their first year together. For all their differences—in affect, upbringing, and even creed—they wound up getting along so much better than Heather had ever dared to hope.

The Fox and the Rabbit. Almost poetic.

Unfortunately, death didn't care for poetry. It'd very nearly demonstrated that yesterday.

Ruth grunted. "You've got one of those _ looks _on your face."

"What look?" Heather deflected, but Ruth wasn't having it.

"We lived," she said sharply. "That's what matters."

"You might not next time," Heather said, her eyes watering. "Y'know, I was thinkin' I should run out and meet y'all at the gate, but instead I decided to go take a nap before you got back." She gave a bitter smile. "Some leader, huh?"

"Nobody knew that big fucking squid would show up," Ruth said. She reached out, hesitated, and then lay her own hand on Heather's shoulder. "We're the strongest team in our year, and we weren't alone. We even had… a guardian angel."

Heather sat up, glancing at her best friend in shock. Ruth was rarely the type for sentimentality. "Whaddaya mean."

Ruth met her eyes, the tension between them suddenly changing shape. "I'll tell you, but this stays within the team, alright? No rumors."

Heather quickly nodded, curiosity firmly piqued. "What happened, Ruthy?"

Ruth took a deep breath. "Do you know Ruby Rose?"

* * *

The biggest surprise of Ember's Soleil's week came when her cousin sat down next to her at lunch. She blinked, looking up at him in wan amusement. "What the fuck do you want, Lou?"

Louis Soleil sighed, running a hand through his slick black hair. He was thin, almost gaunt, one of those kids who got tall without ever getting wide. Ember had always envied that. She'd grown up big in both directions, and neither was particularly welcome. Still, that was just about the only part of Louis' life she envied.

"I came to you because I need your advice," he said.

Ember did her best not to snicker. _ Still as prim and formal as ever, eh, cos? _ "Oh? That's a first."

Lou collapsed his hands in his lap, knuckles white as he kept his face under control. "I am serious, Ember. I… really need your help."

Ember allowed herself a sigh. It'd been a long time since they'd talked. Longer since Louis had been the one to reach out to her, and longer _ still _since he'd shown even a shred of vulnerability around her. This… she could do this much for him. "What do you need?"

"What do you think is the best process for coming out?"

Ember blinked. That was… not on the list of things she'd been expecting. "Like, as trans? Or is this about—"

"I'm asking on behalf of a friend," Louis said quickly. Too quickly.

Ember waited.

"And… for myself, though I am still not a transsexual."

"Transgender," Ember corrected with a faint pang of annoyance. It was still better than the word he'd used last time they talked about this. "You sure that's a good plan, Lou? You were pretty against it last time I brought it up." _ And with pretty good reason, by your standards. _

Louis's hands fiddled a little. It was something Ember hadn't seen since she was very little, a nervous tic that Louis's family had brutally worked to suppress in him. The sight brought back another pang, a memory of sympathy. Ember's childhood hadn't exactly been pleasant, but cousin Lou and his sister had to grow up with dear Uncle Dawn hovering over their shoulders. And that wasn't something Ember would have wished on anybody.

"I am very much _ uncertain _of that, thank you for asking," Lou said, his lips twisting into an uncharacteristically emotive frown. "However… as I said, this isn't primarily about me."

"Right," Ember said. "So, Roze is gonna come out, and you're coming out with them?"

Louis got a panicked look on his face. "H-how did you know about—?"

"Leader club," Ember said blandly. "We share a session." She waved past the question. "Honestly I think that's pretty noble of you, but be careful. Roze'll probably be able to win Yuri over—boy's a bootlicking little pissant and he'll side with whoever the majority is—but you know better than I do that Ormond's gonna give all kinds of shit for—"

"Ember, please!" Louis quickly hissed, glancing across the table. "Don't speak of it here!"

Ember followed his gaze to where the rest of team EMBR sat. Rhea was studiously picking at her spanakopita, and Moon had the audacity to start _ whistling, _as if those big pointy bat ears on his head hadn't picked up every word.

Belka, though, just leaned across the table and gave Louis a broadly skeptical look. "You realize every fuckin' faunus in the school knows already, right? You reek of fish a mile off, human-passing or no."

Louis winced.

"Just tell 'em," Belka continued, looking down at her food with a dismissive wave of her hand, incidentally pointing her twisting horns in Louis's direction. "Do it before Ormond gets outta the hospital. Boy's a fucker, but if he's ever gonna listen to you, it's now. Oh, and quit snickering at his little 'jokes.' Makes the rest of us wanna whoop your ass."

"I will… take that under advisement," Louis gritted out. 

Ember sighed, watching the look on her cousin's face change. He looked _ tired. _

He turned to go, and in a moment of sentimentality Ember reached out to grab his sleeve. "Hey, Lou."

Louis stopped, hanging his head and not quite looking back at her. _ "What, _ cousin?"

Ember didn't let his tone affect her. "Whatever happens," she said. "I'm actually pretty proud of you for this."

Louis froze, his eyes wide as he met hers. On his dark forehead, the Soleil Sunburst faintly glittered, mirroring the one on Ember's own.

"…Appreciated," he said.

* * *

Pyrrha sat on the edge of the airdock, her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap.

It was evening now, sunset over the bay. Beautiful, of course.

_ I'm sorry. _

Pyrrha bit her lip. "It's not your fault."

_ Yes it is. _

"Amber…"

_ If I wasn't here, you'd be kissing him right now. We both know it. I can literally _ ** _feel _ ** _ how much you miss being held by him. _

"It's unfortunate," Pyrrha conceded, closing her eyes. She let the world around her fade, slowly visualizing someplace new. A mirror of the cliffside, but instead of the Emerald Forest, the Mistral Valley spread out before her. The wild, winding streets carved right into the cliffside, the ancient brass elevators and funiculars that serviced it all. The farms below, the Breadbowl, gold and green and ripe for the harvest.

Beside her, Amber sat. She looked like she had when they first met, wrapped in bandages and with that webbed scar across her face. But in this daydream, she was awake, and her almond eyes gazed out over the vista in contemplation.

"I've never been to Mistral," she murmured. "Is it really this pretty?"

Pyrrha let herself a crooked smile. "Not really. I think I'm romanticizing it a bit, but… it really is one of my favorite views." 

She missed it, frequently.

"Why didn't you stay at Haven then?"

Pyrrha shot her headmate a chiding smile. "…So that we never would have met?"

Amber gave a chagrined glare in response, but didn't confirm or deny the subtext.

Still, it wasn't an unfair question, in itself. "I suppose… because I wanted to see something new," Pyrrha admitted. "Haven is _ fine, _ but it's… _ old. _ There's all this tradition and circumstance. I'm from Argus, originally, and I didn't grow up with those rules. I never could understand them. But, I decided that if I was going to go someplace new, I wanted to go someplace _ entirely _new. Somewhere I'd never been before."

The view changed, muddying and shifting, until they were on the Valish waterfront, looking up at the Beacon Cliffside, the tower rising high above. Then, it shifted again, reversing, and they were on the airdock again, looking out across the bay at Vale. It felt a little silly to imagine the view when she was already sitting above it, but the facsimile was itself somehow comforting.

Evidence that her mind and reality were still linked, in some way.

"My mother was from Vale," Pyrrha continued. "She loved Argus, but she always missed living here. She said that, despite everything, she still considered it the greatest kingdom in the world."

Amber chuckled a little. "I… actually wouldn't know. Would you believe I'd never been to Vale? Before, I mean."

Pyrrha looked at her in surprise. "Really?"

"I grew up in a little harbor city up north. Keyhole?"

Pyrrha shook her head. She'd never heard of it.

"Yeah, it's gone now." Amber got a far-off look in her eyes. "I never left it until after I got these powers. And then… well, Ozpin kept me out of the big city so _ they _wouldn't find me. Didn't work, obviously."

"Not really, no," Pyrrha said dryly, studying the imagined skyline. A few of the buildings seemed wrong, so she rearranged them, but she still couldn't quite tell if she'd gotten it right. She gave up on the exercise, and instead focused on the sky. The sun dipped past the horizon, turning it to red, purple, black. The buildings lit up, white and gold, and the stars spun above them until the light changed again, the sunrise turning the sky yellow, then blue, until it was over their heads and past again, slowing as it returned to where it actually lay beyond her eyelids, hanging over the great city like a watching eye.

"Why do you do this?" Amber asked suddenly. "I know Ozpin told you to do this meditation and visualization stuff, but I don't really get why you've kept up with it."

Pyrrha glanced over at Amber. "Well, it lets me talk to you. Properly, I mean, without our thoughts getting quite so tangled up. I enjoy it."

Amber's illusion wavered a little, cheeks reddening as she sharply looked away.

_ I still wish you didn't have to, _ Amber didn't say.

"I don't _ have _ to," Pyrrha said, startling her headmate. "I _ could _pretend you don't exist, you know. I doubt it would go well, but if I really hated you I think I could."

"I wish you hated me, sometimes."

Pyrrha sighed. She slid closer, resting her hand on Amber's shoulder. "I wish you'd stop feeling that way."

Amber snorted, crossing her arms and refusing the contact. "Well, at least your friends hate me. Small victories."

"Nora likes you," Pyrrha said.

"She puts up with me."

"She _ likes _ you," Pyrrha insisted. "You know I'm right. And Ren is… _ wary, _but he's always like that with people he doesn't really know yet. I think he'll like you too, if you give him a chance. And Team RWBY have only just met you! I'm sure you'll get along with them too."

"And Jaune?"

That silenced Pyrrha, a small sliver of pain lancing through her heart. _ He'll come around, _ she didn't say.

Amber didn't quite share her optimism.

"It'll work out," Pyrrha insisted after a moment. She thought of Jaune, imagined him at her side, his goofy jokes, the way his fingers played with her hair, the way he always _ listened. _ "He's a good guy."

Amber huffed. "You'd say that about any boy you loved."

Pyrrha shot her a patient smile. "Maybe, but I didn't fall in love with just any boy."

Now it was Amber's turn to lack a response.

They stayed like that a little longer, in silence. At some point, they opened their eyes. The sun was gone, its faintest fingers waving goodbye as the city glowed in the planet's new shadow.

They sighed, standing up and stretching out the kinks, and headed back to the dorm.

* * *

Ren heard the music from the courtyard. He looked up at the roof. He couldn't see anything in the dark, but when he extended his aura he could feel him. A familiar white light, brilliant and mournful.

He went to the dorm and stowed his freshly-purchased ingredients in the cupboard. Nora was already asleep, sprawled haphazardly on their bed with her headphones on and her Grimm Studies textbook splayed out in front of her. Ren allowed himself a smile, leaning down to kiss her forehead. She hummed happily in her sleep.

He passed Pyrrha on the way out.

"Oh, hi," Pyrrha said. Ren paused, looking at her. For a moment, in the dim light of the hallway, he couldn't quite tell the color of her eyes. Then they resolved to brown.

"Hello, Amber," he said, nodding politely.

Amber's aura gave a hesitant twist. "You going somewhere?" she asked.

"Just out for a walk," he lied. He fought a twitch at it, and hoped Amber wouldn't notice.

It didn't matter, because the part of her that was Pyrrha, the part that knew him so well, noticed anyway. The faint glimmer of her receded soul flinched with a pang of hurt, and Ren felt that hurt in kind. _ I'm sorry. _

"Oh, cool," Amber said, unaware. "Have fun with that."

He left them behind, his face betraying nothing of the conflict in his mind.

He climbed the stairs to the roof, hesitating at the exit sign. He could hear the music again, the faint strains of plucked strings drifting through the door. The white aura burned, wavered, and for a moment, Ren considered going back. Just lying down beside Nora, letting her curl herself around him, and falling into restless sleep.

He hated that part of himself.

He pushed open the door, and Jaune turned to look back at him. "Oh, hey Ren."

"Hello, Jaune."

"Just… got caught up in practicing," Jaune said, his voice hitching a little. His soul betrayed him further, wavering again. _ Unprepared to sleep beside a stranger. _ "What're you doing up?"

"I heard you from below," Ren answered, clamping down on the rush of anxiety. "I wondered if… you'd like some company."

"Oh. Uh, sure, I guess. If you don't mind. I had a couple more songs I wanted to practice."

Ren allowed himself a smile. "I do enjoy hearing you play."

"Oh." In the dark, Ren couldn't see Jaune blush, but he could feel the way his aura fluttered, shifted its color slightly towards pink. "S-sure. Thanks."

Ren didn't have anything else to say, so Jaune soon started playing again. It was a sadder song tonight, something melancholy and slow, but beautiful as well.

Jaune still lagged behind much of his class when it came to combat, but there were certain things he'd mastered. Besides being a natural strategist, he was an exceptional dancer and had a surprisingly firm grasp of cosmetics. He always credited both to his sisters, of course, but Ren could tell he enjoyed them.

Music, though, seemed to be a talent entirely his own. Ren wasn't sure how long Jaune had been playing guitar, but he must have started very young. Now, his fingers danced over the strings, plucking melodies and harmonics out into the cool night air.

And as he fell into it, lost himself in the music, his soul began to sing along. It was a small thing, the faintest straining voice, but it was beautiful too, in its way. A voice that spoke of loss and hurt and pride and worry. Of anxiety and fear and doubt.

Ren wished he was brave enough to reach out. To touch Jaune's arm and let the voice snap into focus, to hear everything clearly and to help soothe the ache. But, he wasn't brave. He never had been.

He still stayed by Jaune's side for an hour or two more, listening to him play.

* * *

As evening fell, Ozpin stared out over the campus, gripping his cane in a tired hand.

He heard the elevator door swish open, and a dull-edged smile came to him. "Glynda."

"The last class of the day just wrapped up," she said, as she promptly walked over to the coffee machine he kept in his office for her use. She started brewing a whole pot.

"You should rest," Ozpin said, turning away from the view to face his oldest companion.

_ Oldest in this life, at least. _

Glynda glared at him over her spectacles. "The freshmen haven't even arrived yet and we have a student in the infirmary recovering from emergency surgery to reattach his _ leg, _ while another had to be stitched up after having most of his body _ lacerated! _ And to make matters _ worse, _ we have a Silver-Eyed Warrior who just revealed herself to _ half her classmates." _

"Yes, but both boys are expected to make full recoveries." Ozpin gave her a calm smile as he walked back to his desk and sat down heavily in his chair. "And so far it seems that the student body at large has not connected Miss Rose to the incident. Those who have are keeping quiet. All in all, considering the scale of the Grimm, the encounter was a tremendous victory for our students. Most Class-S grimm claim many lives before they are slain."

Glynda sat across from him, crossing her arms. "Certainly, but _ how _ in the bloody _ pit _ did an Atkorock appear this close to Beacon?" She sighed radiating bitter frustration. "Why didn't the seismic sensors pick it up? We have _ countermeasures _for this."

Ozpin pinched the bridge of his nose, adjusting his pince-nez glasses in the same motion. "No countermeasure is perfect," he sighed, a wave of fatigue rattling through him. _ Seventy years I've had this body. _ His lips took on the faintest wry twist, and he reached for his mug of hot cocoa. _ Long years, at that. _

He drank, savoring the sweet and simple pleasure, before returning to the unpleasant business at hand. "Still, we should discuss this lapse."

Glydna's frown intensified. She absentmindedly snapped her fingers, and a coffee cup floated out of the cupboard, across the room, and into her hands. She held it, fingers drumming lightly on the porcelain as she thought. It was a habit she'd had as long as Ozpin had known her, since she was a teenager at Beacon. Forty years had dried her sense of humor to dust and hardened her skin against the world, but it hadn't dulled her anxious streak.

Just so, it hadn't dulled the fierce intelligence that seared behind her pale green eyes. "This timing is too convenient," she said, lifting her head to look at him over her glasses. "An investigation of Beacon's defenses will siphon our attention away from Mistral. Furthermore, if any of our students _ had _been killed, it would have critically wounded Beacon's morale at a time when worldwide tensions are already high."

Ozpin nodded, thoughtfully running his index finger up and down the hilt of his cane. A habit of his own, lifetimes old. _ Glynda and I aren't so dissimilar, I suppose. In another world, she might have been my reincarnation, and Ozpin my lieutenant. _

He shook away the peculiar notion. "It would not be the first time She's attacked the academies, but as an isolated incident it hardly seems like Her." He frowned, pausing to think. "It's tempting to think she was targeting Ruby in some manner, but this was hardly the most effective way to do so. We should not rule out coincidence, or the actions of other parties and agents."

Glynda's tapping stopped. She snapped her fingers again and the carafe drifted over to the desk, glowing faintly in the light of her semblance. She poured herself a full cup. "Others? Sir…who else in God's good name has the ability to bait an Atkorock into a targeted attack?"

"The Branwen tribe, for one." Ozpin steepled his fingers. "The Aura Tracking Network our students deployed picked up a powerful portal semblance, one attuned specifically to Miss Xiao Long. Raven _ was _here yesterday."

Glynda's back snapped straight, and her hands balled into fists on the desk. "What!? Oh _ damn _that woman."

"It may yet be a coincidence," Ozpin said evenly, though he doubted his own words. Raven's appearance had been a shock, but it was suspicious for other reasons. Raven knew that aura scanners could potentially identify her distinct semblance. She'd visited the campus a few times in the past, but she'd always been exceptionally careful to fly in from a random direction, using an ability which no modern sensor could detect.

To arrive so close to the school, even though it was outside the ordinary sensor perimeter… she knew she'd be spotted. Just as she'd known that her tribe's latest generation of spies would be found out eventually.

_ This was a message. _ Ozpin's fingers drifted across the inlaid hilt of his cane in frustration. _ But what was it meant to convey? She arrived before the attack—was it a warning? Or… _

"Have you contacted Qrow yet?" Glynda asked.

Ozpin took a breath, blinking twice to clear his eyes and frowning at the reminder of his most pressing concern. "He's gone incommunicado. The situation in Mistral is continuing to deteriorate, and we need him there more than here."

Glynda frowned. "I hate splitting our focus like this. She could attack any of the academies right now and we'd hardly be able to respond in time."

"By the same token, no one academy is defenseless," Ozpin reassured her. "But I'll send word to Leonardo, Theo, and James to be extra vigilant. In the meantime, we'll need to put out a call for additional huntsmen to sweep the Emerald Forest. Forever Fall as well, just to be safe."

Glynda shut her eyes tight as she took a long sip. "We're still going ahead with initiation, then?"

Ozpin crossed his hands over his desk with a sigh. "We must continue to train the next generation," he said.

Glynda's free hand resumed its tapping. "We're sending children to prove themselves where their seniors were nearly killed days before," she said. Not a question.

Ozpin nodded. "So we are."

_ We've come so far. So long as we weather this storm, humanity _ ** _will _ ** _ come together again. I'm sure of it. _

_ Just a little longer. _

* * *

"What are you doing?"

The sound of the heavy voice froze the blood in her veins, and she fought the instinct to hide herself. It would do no good here, caught in her bunk with a half-packed bug-out bag.

Instead, she looked up at him and tried her best to be brave.

Ochre… scared her. He always had.

He'd always been one of the most violent ones. One of Adam's closest allies. Even now, she knew he still believed in their disgraced leader's methods, and the thought made her sick to her stomach.

"I'm going out on a scouting mission," she lied. "We're moving soon, and the captain wants all the intel he can get."

Ochre stared back at her, his eyes narrowed. His mask was off, revealing the rows of thin scars cutting over his mouth. His arms were crossed over his massive chest. "You're running away."

She swallowed, feeling suddenly less brave. "N-no, I'm—"

He held up a hand, glancing back towards the hallway. "What do you plan to do?" he asked, his voice lowering like she'd never heard before.

"I…" she fought the urge to run, to scream, to change her skin and hide herself. She could feel it change regardless, though she wasn't sure of the color. "I don't know," she admitted, barely a whisper.

"They'll come for you," he cautioned. "They'll catch you too."

_ Take a breath. Be _ ** _brave._ ** Her skin changed again, red and defiant. "They can try."

Ochre's eyes narrowed further. He didn't say anything, just stared at her like he wanted to see through her skin, see what was at her core. Her motivation, maybe. Why she needed to do it.

Why now, and not before.

Whatever he found, it seemed to weigh heavily on him. "The western watchtower door," he said, quietly. His lips twisted into a thoughtful frown, and for a moment one of his teeth slipped his lips, razor-sharp and pointed. "The cameras will short out at four past midnight. Be quick."

Her eyes widened as he turned to go, and before she could stop herself she leapt from her bunk and ran to him, wrapping him in a hug.

"Thank you," she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks.

He didn't say anything, but he waited for her to let go before he left, heavy footsteps fading down the hall. 

She wondered for a moment what he was thinking. She'd never been his friend, had she? She hardly knew a single thing about him. Why offer her this kindness, even as she betrayed the cause he fought for?

Maybe he'd finally seen it too. The festering rot Blake had tried to warn them about, years ago. Or maybe it was just out of respect to a comrade who'd fought beside him. In the end, she supposed it didn't really matter. The result was the same.

Ilia sniffed away her tears and quickly returned to her packing. It was a long way to the town, and there wasn't much time left.

Not much time at all, before the White Fang returned to Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back on track! An entire chapter's worth of Everyone But RWBY.
> 
> For those who missed it, I ended up rolling back 2 chapters b/c I wasn't happy with the pacing and how I'd handle the plot threads I left hanging. This is me trying to tie things up a little, settling things with some of the OCs and giving JNPR+A a chance to exist for a bit. We'll be back to RWBY next chapter, but while this is ultimately their story, the ppl around them are important too.


End file.
